
Glass. 
Book. 



U 



_tLs 



CORNELL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 

No. ii 



JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY 



BY 

DELTON THOMAS HOWARD, A.M. 

FORMERLY FELLOW IN THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY 



A THESIS 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of 

Cornell University in Partial Fulfilment of the 

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor 

of Philosophy 



NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 

1919 



CORNELL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
No. ii 



JOHN DEWEY'S LO.GICAL THEORY 



BY 

DELTON THOMAS HOWARD, A.M. 

FORMERLY FELLOW IN THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY 



A THESIS 

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of 

Cornell University in Partial Fulfilment of the 

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor 

of Philosophy 



NEW YORK 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 

1919 






<^ 



> 



PRESS OF 

THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY 

LANCASTER. PA. 



PREFACE 

It seems unnecessary to offer an apology for an historical 
treatment of Professor Dewey's logical theories, since function- 
alism glories in the genetic method. To be sure, certain more 
extreme radicals are opposed to a genetic interpretation of the 
history of human thought, but this is inconsistent. At any rate, 
the historical method employed in "the following study C may 
escape censure by reason of its simple character, for it is little 
more than a critical review of Professor Dewey's writings in their 
historical order, with no discussion of influences and connections, 
and with little insistence upon rigid lines of development. It is 
proposed to "follow the lead of the subject-matter" as far as 
possible ; to discover what topics interested Professor Dewey, how 
he dealt with them, and" what conclusions he arrived at. This 
plan has an especial advantage when applied to a body of doc- 
trine which, like Professor Dewey's, does not possess a syste- 
matic form of its own, since it avoids the distortion which a 
more rigid method would be apt to produce. 

It has not been possible, within the limits of the present study, to 
take note of all of Professor Dewey's writings, and no reference has 
been made to some which are of undoubted interest and impor- 
tance. Among these may be mentioned especially his books and 
papers on educational topics and a number of his ethical writings. 
Attention has been devoted almost exclusively to those writings 
which have some important bearing upon his logical theory. 
The division into chapters is partly arbitrary, although the 
periods indicated are quite clearly marked by the different direc- 
tions which Professor Dewey's interests took from time to time. 
It will be seen that there is considerable chance for error in distin- 
guishing between the important and the unimportant, and in 
selecting the essays which lie in the natural line of the author's 
development. But, valeat quantum, as William James would say. 

The criticisms and comments which have been made from time 
to time, as seemed appropriate, may be considered pertinent or 
irrelevant according to the views of the reader. It is hoped that 



iv PREFACE. 

they are not entirely aside from the mark, and that they do not 
interfere with a fair presentation of the author's views. The 
last chapter is devoted to a direct criticism of Professor Dewey's 
functionalism, with some comments on the general nature of 
philosophical method. 

Since this thesis was written, Professor Dewey has published 
two or three books and numerous articles, which are perhaps more 
important than any of his previous writings. The volume of 
Essays in Experimental Logic (1916) is a distinct advance upon 
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays, pub- 
lished six years earlier. Most of these essays, however, are 
considered here in their original form, and the new material, 
while interesting, presents no vital change of standpoint. It 
might be well to call attention to the excellent introductory essay 
which Professor Dewey has provided for this new volume. Some 
mention might also be made of the volume of essays by eight rep- 
resentative pragma tists, which appeared last year (191 7) under 
the title, Creative Intelligence. My comments on Professor Dewey's 
contribution to the volume have been printed elsewhere. 1 It has 
not seemed necessary, in the absence of significant developments, 
to extend the thesis beyond its original limits, and it goes to 
press, therefore, substantially as written two years ago. 

I wish to express my gratitude to the members of the faculty 
of the Sage School of Philosophy for many valuable suggestions 
and kindly encouragement in the course of my work. I am most 
deeply indebted to Professor Ernest Albee for his patient guidance 
and helpful criticism. Many of his suggestions, both as to plan 
and detail, have been adopted and embodied in the thesis, and 
these have contributed materially to such logical coherence and 
technical accuracy as it may possess. The particular views 
expressed are, of course, my own. I wish also to thank Professor 
J. E. Creighton especially for his friendly interest and for many 
suggestions which assisted the progress of my work, as well as 
for his kindness in looking over the proofs. 

D. T. Howard. 

Evanston, Illinois, 
June, 1918. 
1 "The Pragmatic Method," Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific 
Methods, 1918, Vol. XV, pp. 149-156. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. "Psychology as Philosophic Method" I 

II. The Development of the Psychological Standpoint . . 15 

III. "Moral Theory and Practice" 33 

IV. Functional Psychology 47 

V. The Evolutionary Standpoint 59 

VI. "Studies in Logical Theory" 72 

VII. The Polemical Period 88 

VIII. Later Developments 105 

IX. Conclusions 119 



CHAPTER I 

"PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD" 

Dewey's earliest standpoint in philosophy is presented in two 
articles published in Mind in 1886: "The Psychological Stand- 
point," and "Psychology as Philosophic Method." 1 These 
articles appear to have been written in connection with his 
Psychology, which was published in the same year, and which 
represents the same general point of view as applied to the study 
of mental phenomena. For the purposes of the present study 
attention may be confined to the two articles in Mind. 

Dewey begins his argument, in "The Psychological Stand- 
point," with a reference to Professor Green's remark that the 
psychological standpoint is what marks the difference between 
transcendentalism and British empiricism. Dewey takes excep- 
tion to this view, and asserts that the two schools hold this 
standpoint in common, and, furthermore, that the psychological 
standpoint has been the strength of British empiricism and deser- 
tion of that standpoint its weakness. Shadworth Hodgson's 
comment on this proposal testifies to its audacity. In a review 
of Dewey's article, he says: "If for instance we are told by a 
competent writer, that Absolute Idealism is not only a truth of 
experience but one attained directly by the method of experien- 
tial psychology, we should not allow our astonishment to prevent 
our examining the arguments, by virtue of which English psy- 
chology attains the results of German transcendentalism without 
quitting the ground of experience." 2 

Dewey defines his psychological standpoint as follows: "We 
are not to determine the nature of reality or of any object of 
philosophical inquiry by examining it as it is in itself, but only 
as it is an element in our knowledge, in our experience, only as 
it is related to our mind, or is an 'idea'. . . . Or, in the ordinary 

1 Vol. xi, pp. 1-19; pp. 153-173. 

2 "Illusory Psychology," Mind, Vol. XI, 1886, p. 478. 

I 



2 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

way of putting it, the nature of all objects of philosophical 
inquiry is to be fixed by finding out what experience says about 
them." 1 The implications of this definition do not appear at 
first sight, but they become clearer as the discussion proceeds. 

Locke, Dewey continues, deserted the psychological stand- 
point because he did not, as he proposed, explain the nature of 
such things as matter and mind by reference to experience. On 
the contrary, he explained experience through the assumption of 
the two unknowable substances, matter and mind. Berkeley 
also deserted the psychological standpoint, in effect, by having 
recourse to a purely transcendent Spirit. Even Hume deserted 
it by assuming as the only reals certain unrelated sensations, and 
by trying to explain the origin of experience and knowledge by 
their combination. These reals were supposed to exist in inde- 
pendence of an organized experience, and to constitute it by 
their association. It might be argued that Hume's sensations 
are found in experience by analysis, and this would probably be 
true. But the sensations are nothing apart from the conscious- 
ness in which they are found. "Such a sensation/' Dewey says, 
"a sensation which exists only within and for experience, is not 
one which can be used to account for experience. It is but one 
element in an organic whole, and can no more account for the 
whole, than a given digestive act can account for the existence 
of a living body." 2 

So far Dewey is merely restating the criticism of English em- 
piricism that had been made by Green and his followers. Reality, 
as experienced, is a whole of organically related parts, not a 
mechanical compound of elements. Whatever is to be explained 
must be taken as a fact of experience, and its meaning will be 
revealed in terms of its position and function within the whole. 
But while Dewey employs the language of idealism, it is doubtful 
whether he has grasped the full significance of the "concrete 
universal" of the Hegelian school. The following passage 
illustrates the difficulty: "The psychological standpoint as it 
has developed itself is this: all that is, is for consciousness or 
knowledge. The business of the psychologist is to give a genetic 

1 "The Psychological Standpoint," Mind, 1886, Vol. XI, p. 2. 

2 Ibid., p. 7. 



"PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD." 3 

account of the various elements within this consciousness, and 
thereby fix their place, determine their validity, and at the same 
time show definitely what the real and eternal nature of this 
consciousness is." 1 

Consciousness (used here as identical with 'experience') is 
apparently interpreted as a structure made up of elements related 
in a determinable order, and having, consequently, a 'real and 
eternal nature.' The result is a 'structural' view of reality, and 
the type of idealism for which Dewey stands may fittingly be 
called 'structural' idealism. This type of idealism does, in fact, 
hold a position intermediate between English empiricism and 
German transcendentalism. But it would not commonly be 
considered a synthesis of the best characteristics of the two 
schools. 'Structural' idealism is, historically considered, a 
reversion to Kant which retains the mechanical elements of the 
Critique, but fails to reckon with the truly organic mode of inter- 
pretation in which it culminates. As experience, from Kant's 
undeveloped position, is a structure of sensations and forms, so 
Dewey's 'consciousness' is a compound of separate elements or 
existences related in a 'real and eternal' order. 

Dewey illustrates his method, in the discussion which follows, 
by employing it, or showing how it should be employed, in the 
definition of certain typical objects of philosophical inquiry. 
The first to be considered are subject and object. In dealing 
with the relation of subject to object, the psychological method 
will attempt to show how consciousness differentiates itself, or 
'specifies' itself, into subject and object. These terms will be 
viewed as related terms within the whole of 'consciousness,' rather 
than as elements existing prior to or in independence of the whole 
in which they are found. 

There is a type of realism which illustrates the opposite or 
ontological method. It is led, through a study of the dependence 
of the mind upon the organism, to a position in which subject and 
object fall apart, out of relation to each other. The separation 
of the two leads to the positing of a third term, an unknown x, 
which is supposed to unite them. The psychological method 

1 Op. cit., p. 8 f. 



4 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

would hold that the two objects have their union, not in an un- 
known 'real,' but in the 'consciousness' in which they appear. 
The individual consciousness as subject, and the objects over 
against it, are elements at once distinguished and related within 
the whole. All the terms are facts of experience, and none are 
to be assumed as ontological reals. 

Subjective idealism, Dewey continues, makes a similar error 
in failing to discriminate between the ego, or individual conscious- 
ness, and the Absolute Consciousness within which ego and object 
are differentiated elements. It fails to see that subject and 
object are complements, and inexplicable except as related ele- 
ments in a larger whole. The individual consciousness, again, 
and the universal 'Consciousness,' are to be defined by reference 
to experience. It is not to be assumed at the start, as the sub- 
jective idealists assume, that the nature of the individual con- 
sciousness is known. The ego is to be defined, not assumed, 
and this is the essence of the psychological method. 

So far, two factors in Dewey's standpoint are clearly discern- 
ible. In the first place, all noumena and transcendent reals 
are to be rejected as means of explanation, and definition is to 
be wholly in terms of experienced elements, as experienced. In 
the second place, experience is to be regarded as a rational system 
of related elements, while explanation is to consist in tracing 
out the relations which any element bears to the whole. The 
universal 'Consciousness' is the whole, and the individual mind, 
again, is an element within the whole, to be explained by tracing 
out the relations which it bears to other elements and to the 
whole system. It is not easy to avoid the conclusion that Dewey 
conceives of 'consciousness' as a construct of existentially 
distinct terms. 

Dewey does not actually treat subject and object, individual 
and universal consciousness, in the empirical manner for which 
he contends. He merely outlines a method ; and, while this has a 
negative bearing as against transcendent modes of explanation, 
it has little content of its own. But in spite of Dewey's lack of 
explicitness, it is evident that he tends to view his 'objects of 
philosophical inquiry' as so many concrete particular existences 



"PYSCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD." 5 

or things. The idea that they can be empirically marked out 
and investigated seems to imply this. But subject, object, 
individual, and universal are certainly not reducible to particular 
sensations, even though it must be admitted that they have a 
reference to particulars. These abstract concepts had been a 
source of difficulty to the empiricists, because they had not been 
able to reduce them to particular impressions, and Dewey's pro- 
posed method appears to involve the same difficulty. 

In his second article, on "Psychology as Philosophic Method," 
Dewey proposes to show that his standpoint is practically iden- 
tical with that of transcendental idealism. This is made possible, 
he believes, through the fact that, since experience or conscious- 
ness is the only reality, psychology, as the scientific account of 
this reality, becomes identical with philosophy. 

In maintaining his position, Dewey finds it necessary to criticise 
the tendency, found in certain idealists, to treat psychology 
merely as a special science. This view of psychology is attained, 
Dewey observes, by regarding man under two arbitrarily deter- 
mined aspects. Taken as a finite being acting amid finite things, 
a knowing, willing, feeling phenomenon, man is said to be the 
object of a special science, psychology. But in another aspect 
man is infinite, the universal self-consciousness, and as such is 
the object of philosophy. This distinction between the two 
aspects of man's nature, Dewey believes, cannot be maintained. 
As a distinction, it must arise within consciousness, and it must 
therefore be a psychological distinction. Psychology cannot 
limit itself to anything less than the whole of experience, and 
cannot, therefore, be a special science dependent, like others, 
upon philosophy for its working concepts. On the contrary, the 
method of psychology must be the method of philosophy. 

Dewey reaches this result quite easily, because he makes psy- 
chology the science of reality to begin with. "The universe," 
he says, "except as realized in an individual, has no existence. 
. . . Self-consciousness means simply an individualized universe ; 
and if this universe has not been realized in man, if man be not 
self-conscious, then no philosophy whatever is possible. If it 
has been realized, it is in and through psychological experience 



6 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

that this realization has occurred. Psychology is the scientific 
account of this realization, of this individualized universe, of 
this self-consciousness." 1 

It is difficult to understand exactly what these expressions 
meant for Dewey. Granting that the human mind is both 
individual and universal, what objection could be raised against 
the study of its individual or finite aspects as the special subject- 
matter of a particular science? All the sciences, as Dewey was 
aware, are abstract in method. Dewey's position appears to be 
that the universal and individual aspects of consciousness are 
nothing apart from each other, and must be studied together- 
But 'consciousness' in Dewey's view is, in fact, two conscious- 
nesses. Reality as a whole is a Consciousness, and the individual 
mind is another consciousness. A problem arises, therefore, as 
to their connection. Dewey affirms that, unless they are united, 
unless the universal is given in the individual consciousness, 
there can be no science of the whole, and therefore no philosophy. 
The epistemological problem of the relation of the mind to reality 
becomes, accordingly, the raison d'etre of his method. The 
problem was an inheritance from subjective idealism. It may 
be pointed out that there is some similarity between Dewey's 
standpoint and Berkeley's. Both conceive of consciousness 
as a construct of elements, and Dewey's 'Consciousness in 
general ' holds much the same relation to the finite consciousness 
that the Divine Mind holds to the individual consciousness in 
Berkeley's system. The similarity between the two standpoints 
must not be overemphasized, but it is none the less suggestive 
and interesting. 

In attempting to determine the proper status of psychology 
as a science, Dewey is led into a more detailed exposition of his 
standpoint. His position in general is well indicated in the fol- 
lowing passage: " In short, the real esse of things is neither their 
percipi, nor their intelligi alone ; it is their experiri." 2 The science 
of the intelligi is logic, and of the percipi, philosophy of nature. 
But these are abstractions from the experiri, the science of which 
is psychology. If it be denied that the experiri, self-conscious- 

1 "Psychology as Philosophic Method," Mind, 1886, Vol. XI, p. 157. 

2 Ibid., p. 160. (Observe that this is a direct reference to Berkeley.) 



"PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD." 7 

ness in its wholeness, can be the subject-matter of psychology, 
then the possibility of philosophy is also denied. "If man, as 
matter of fact, does not realise the nature of the eternal and the 
universal within himself, as the essence of his own being; if he 
does not at one stage of his experience consciously, and in all 
stages implicitly, lay hold of this universal and eternal, then it is 
mere matter of words to say that he can give no account of things 
as they universally and eternally are. To deny, therefore, that 
self-consciousness is a matter of psychological experience is to 
deny the possibility of any philosophy." 1 Dewey assures us 
again that his method alone will solve the epistemological prob- 
lem. 

Self-consciousness, as that within which things exist sub 
specie ceternitatis and in ordine ad universum, must be the object 
of psychology. The refusal to take self-consciousness as an 
experienced fact, Dewey says, results in such failures as are seen 
in Kant, Hegel, and even Green and Caird, to give any adequate 
account of the nature of the Absolute. Kant, for purely logical 
reasons, denied that self-consciousness could be an object of 
experience, although he admitted conceptions and perceptions 
as matters of experience. As a result of his attitude, conception 
and perception were never brought into organic connection; the 
self-conscious, eternal order of the world was referred to some- 
thing back of experience. Dewey attributes Kant's failure to 
his logical method, which led him away from the psychological 
standpoint in which he would have found self-consciousness as 
a directly presented fact. 

This criticism of Kant's ' logical method ' fails to take account 
of the transitional nature of Kant's standpoint. Looking back- 
ward, it is easy enough to ask why Kant did not begin with the 
organic view of experience at which he finally arrived. But the 
answer must be that the organic standpoint did not exist until 
Kant, by his 'logical method,' had brought it to light. The 
Kantian interpretation of experience, in which, as Dewey asserts, 
conception and perception were never brought into organic 
relation, is a half-way stage between mechanism and organism. 

1 Op. cit. 



S JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

But how does Dewey propose to improve upon Kant's position? 
He will first of all put Kant's noumenal self back into experience, 
as a fact in consciousness. But how will this help to bring per- 
ception and conception into closer union? There seems to be no 
answer. Dewey's view appears to be that organic relations are 
achieved whenever an object is made a part of experience 
and so brought into connection with other experienced facts. 
'Organic relation' is interpreted as equivalent to 'mental rela- 
tion.' But mental relations are not organic because they are 
mental. It would be as easy to* assert that they are mechanical. 
The test lies in the nature of the relations which are actually 
found in the mental sphere and the fitness of the organic cate- 
gories to express them. Dewey's 'consciousness,' as has been 
said before, appears to be a structure, not an organism. Its 
parts are external to each other, however closely they may be 
related. An organic view of experience would begin with a 
denial of the actuality of bare facts or sensations, and would not 
waver in maintaining that standpoint to the end. 

Hegel's advance upon Kant, Dewey continues, "consisted 
essentially in showing that Kant's logical standard was erroneous, 
and that, as a matter of logic, the only true criterion or standard 
was the organic notion, or Begriff, which is a systematic totality, 
and accordingly able to explain both itself and also the simpler 
processes and principles." 1 The logical reformation which 
Hegel accomplished was most important, but the work of Kant 
still needed to be completed by "showing self-consciousness as a 
fact of experience, as well as perception through organic forms 
and thinking through organic principles." 2 This element is 
latent in Hegel, Dewey believes, but needs to be brought out. 

T. H. Green comes under the same criticism. He followed 
Kant's logical method, and as a consequence arrived at the same 
negative results. The nature of self-consciousness remains un- 
known to Green ; he can affirm its existence, but cannot describe 
its nature. Dewey quotes that passage from the Prolegomena 
to Ethics in which Green says: 3 "As to what that conscious- 

1 Op. cit., p. 161. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Third Edition, p. 54. 



"PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD." 9 

ness in itself or in its completeness is, we can only make negative 
statements. That there is such a consciousness is implied in the 
existence of the world ; but what it is we only know through 
its so far acting in us as to enable us, however partially and 
interruptedly, to have knowledge of a world or an intelligent 
experience." If, Dewey observes, Green had begun with the 
latter point of view, and had taken self-consciousness as at least 
partially realized in finite minds, he would have been able to make 
some positive statements about it. Dewey, however, has not 
given the most adequate interpretation of Green's 'Spiritual 
Principle in Nature.' This was evidently, for Green, a symbol 
of the intelligibility of the world as organically conceived, an 
order which could not be comprehended by the mechanical 
categories, but which was nevertheless real. As Green tended 
to hypostatize the organic conception, so Dewey would make it a 
concrete reality, with the further specification that it must be 
something given to psychological observation. 

The chief point of Dewey's criticism of the idealists is that they 
fail to establish self-consciousness as an experienced fact; and, 
Dewey maintains, it must be so established if it is to be anything 
real and genuine. If it is anything that can be discussed at all, 
it must be an element in experience; and if it is in experience, it 
must be the subject-matter of psychology. It is inevitable, 
from Dewey's standpoint, that transcendentalism should adopt 
his psychological method. 

In the further development of his standpoint, Dewey considers 
(i) the relations of psychology to the special sciences, and (2) 
the relation of psychology to logic. Dewey's conception of the 
relation of psychology to the special sciences is well illustrated 
in the following passage: ''Mathematics, physics, biology exist, 
because conscious experience reveals itself to be of such a nature, 
that one may make virtual abstraction from the whole, and con- 
sider a part by itself, without damage, so long as the treatment is 
purely scientific, that is, so long as the implicit connection with 
the whole is left undisturbed, and the attempt is not made to 
present this partial science as metaphysic, or as an explanation of 
the whole, as is the usual fashion of our uncritical so-called 



10 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

'scientific philosophies.' Nay more, this abstraction of some 
one sphere is itself a living function of the psychologic experience. 
It is not merely something which it allows: it is something which 
it does. It is the analytic aspect of its own activity, whereby it 
deepens and renders explicit, realizes its own nature. . . . The 
analytic movement constitutes the special sciences ; the synthetic 
constitutes the philosophy of nature ; the self-developing activity 
itself, as psychology, constitutes philosophy." 1 

The special sciences are regarded as abstractions from the 
central or psychological point of view, but they are legitimate 
abstractions, constituted by a proper analytic movement of the 
total self -consciousness, which specifies itself into the special 
branches of knowledge. If we begin with any special science, 
and drive it back to its fundamentals, it reveals its abstractness, 
and thought is led forward into other sciences, and finally into 
philosophy, as the science of the whole. But philosophy, first 
appearing as a special science, turns out to be science; it is pre- 
supposed in all the special sciences, and is their basis. But 
where does psychology stand in this classification? 

At first sight psychology appears to be a special science, ab- 
stract like the others. "As to systematic observation, experi- 
ment, conclusion and verification, it can differ in no essential 
way from any one of them." 2 But psychology, like philosophy, 
turns out to be a science of the whole. Each special science 
investigates a special sphere of conscious experience. "From 
one science to another we go, asking for some explanation of 
conscious experience, until we come to psychology. . . . But 
the very process that has made necessary this new science reveals 
also that each of the former sciences existed only in abstraction 
from it. Each dealt with some one phase of conscious experience, 
and for that very reason could not deal with the totality which 
gave it its being, consciousness." 3 Philosophy and psychology 
therefore mainly coincide, and the method of psychology, 
properly developed, becomes the method of philosophy. 

If psychology is to be identified with philosophy in this fashion, 

i Mind, Vol. XI, p. 166 f. 

2 Ibid., p. 166. 

3 Ibid. 



"PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD: 1 II 

the mere change of name would seem to be superfluous. There 
would be no reason for maintaining psychology as a separate 
discipline. Perhaps Dewey did not intend that it should be 
maintained separately. In that case, the total effect of his 
argument would be to prescribe certain methods for philosophy. 
It seems necessary to suppose that Dewey proposed to merge 
philosophy in psychology, and make it an exact science while 
retaining its universality. "Science," he argued, "is the syste- 
matic account, or reason of fact; Psychology is the completed 
systematic account of the ultimate fact, which, as fact, reveals 
itself as reason. . . ." x Self-consciousness in its ultimate 
nature is conceived of as a special fact, over and above what it 
includes in the way of particulars. Psychology, as the science 
of this ultimate fact, must at the same time be philosophy. The 
identification of the two disciplines depends upon taking the 
'wholeness' of reality as a 'fact,' which can be brought under 
observation. This is a natural conclusion from Dewey's struc- 
tural view of reality. 

In taking up the subject of the relation of psychology to logic, 
Dewey remarks that in philosophy matter and form cannot be 
separated. "Self-consciousness is the final truth, and in self- 
consciousness the form as organic system and the content as 
organized system are exactly equal to each other." 2 Logic 
abstracts from the whole, gives us only the form, or intelligi of 
reality, and is therefore only one moment in philosophy. Since 
logic is an abstraction from Nature, we cannot get from logic 
back to Nature, by means of logic. We do, as a matter of fact, 
make the transition in philosophy, because the facts force us 
back to Nature. . Just as in Hegel's logic, the category of quality, 
when pressed, reveals itself as inadequate to express the facts, 
and is compelled to pass into the category of quantity, so does 
logic as a whole, when pressed, reveal its inadequacy to express 
the whole of reality. The transition from category to category 
in the Hegelian logic is not an unfolding of the forms as forms, 
but results from a compulsion exerted by the facts, when the 

1 Op. cit., p. 170. 

2 Ibid. 



12 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

categories are used to explain them. Logic is, and must remain, 
abstract in all its processes, and its outcome (with Hegel, Geist) 
may assert the abstract necessity of one self-conscious whole, 
but cannot give the reality. "Logic cannot reach, however 
much it may point to, an actual individual. The gathering up 
of the universe into one self-conscious individuality it may assert 
as necessary, it cannot give it as reality.'" 1 Taken as an abstract 
method, logic is apt to result in a pantheism, "where the only 
real is the Idee, and where all its factors and moments, including 
spirit and nature, are real only at different stages or phases of the 
Idee, but vanish as imperfect ways of looking at things . . . 
when we reach the Idee." 2 

Dewey has in mind logic as a science of the forms of reality 
taken in abstraction from their content. In reality, however, 
there can be no logic of concepts apart from their concrete 
application. Hegel certainly never believed that it was possible 
to abstract the logical forms from reality and study them in their 
isolation. As against a purely formal logic, if such a thing were 
possible, Dewey's criticism would be valid, but the transcen- 
dental logic of his time was not formal in this sense. The psy- 
chological method which Dewey offers as a substitute for the 
logical method escapes, he believes, the difficulties of the latter 
method. At the same time it preserves, in his opinion, the essen- 
tial spirit of the Hegelian method. Dewey's comments show 
that he conceives his method to be a restatement, in improved 
form, of the doctrine of the 'concrete universal.' But the 
'psychological method' and the method of idealism are, if any- 
thing, antithetical. An excellent summary of Dewey's theory 
is afforded by the following passage: "Only a living actual Fact 
can preserve within its unity that organic system of differences 
in virtue of which it lives and moves and has its being. It is 
with this fact, conscious experience in its entirety, that psychology 
as method begins. It thus brings to clear light of day the pre- 
supposition implicit in every philosophy, and thereby affords 
logic, as well as the philosophy of nature, its basis, ideal and 
surety. If we have determined the nature of reality, by a 

1 Op. cit., p. 172. 

2 Ibid. 



"PSYCHOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHIC METHOD." 1 3 

process whose content equals its form, we can show the meaning, 
worth and limits of any one moment of this reality." 1 

It would be useless to speculate upon the various possible 
interpretations that might be given of Dewey's psychological 
method. The most critical examination of the text will not 
dispel its vagueness, nor afford an answer to the many questions 
that arise. It does, however, throw an interesting light on 
certain tendencies in Dewey's own thinking. 

Dewey's attempt to show that English empiricism and trans- 
cendentalism have a common psychological basis must be re- 
garded as a failure. That the nature of the attempt reveals 
a misunderstanding, or fatal lack of appreciation, on the part 
of Dewey, of the critical philosophy and the later development 
of idealism by Hegel, has already been suggested. He does not 
appear to have grasped the significance of the movement from 
Kant to Hegel. Kant, of course, believed that the a priori 
forms of experience could be determined by a process of critical 
analysis, which would reveal them in their purity. The con- 
stitutive relations of experience were supposed by him to be 
limited to the pure forms of sensibility, space and time, and the 
twelve categories of the understanding, which, being imposed 
upon the manifold of sensations, as organized by the productive 
imagination, determined once and for all the order of the phe- 
nomenal world. His logic, therefore, as an account of the forms 
of experience, would represent logic of the type which Dewey 
criticized. But with the rejection of Kant's noumenal world, 
the critical method assumed a different import. It was no longer 
to be supposed that reality, as knowable, was organized under 
the forms of a determinate number of categories, which could 
be separated out and classified. Kant's idea that experience 
was an intelligible system was retained, but its intelligibility 
was not supposed to be wholly comprised in man's methods of 
knowing it. The instrumental character of the categories was 
recognized. Criticism, was directed upon the categories, with 
the object of determining their validity, spheres of relevance, 
and proper place in the system of knowledge. Such a criticism, 

1 Op. cit. 



14 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

in the nature of things, could not deal with the forms of thought 
in abstraction from their application. Direct reference to ex- 
perience, therefore, became a necessary element in idealism. 
At the same time, philosophy became a 'criticism of categories.' 
The method is empirical, but never psychological. 

Dewey recognized the need of an empirical method in philoso- 
phy, but failed to show specifically how psychology could deal 
with philosophical problems. He appears to have conceived 
that sensation and meaning, facts and forms, were present in 
experience or 'Consciousness,' as if this were some total under- 
standing which retained the elements in a fixed union and order. 
While, according to his method, the forms of this universal 
consciousness could not be considered apart from the particulars 
in which they inhered, they might be studied by a survey of ex- 
perience, a direct appeal to consciousness, in which 'form and 
content are equal.' He seems to have held that truth is given 
in immediate experience. A study of reality as immediately 
given, therefore, to psychological observation, would provide an 
account of the eternal nature of things, as they stand in the 
universal mind. Dewey did not attempt a criticism of the cate- 
gories and methods which psychology must employ in such a 
task. Had he done so, the advantages of a critical method 
might have occurred to him. 



CHAPTER II 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT 

The "psychological method," as so far presented, is an outline 
which must be developed in detail before its philosophical import 
is revealed. For several years following the publication of his 
first articles in Mind Dewey was occupied with the task of work- 
ing out his method in greater detail, and giving it more concrete 
form. His thought during this period follows a fairly regular 
order of development, which is to be sketched in the present 
chapter. 

In 1887 Dewey published in Mind an article entitled "Know- 
ledge as Idealisation." 1 This article is, in effect, a consideration 
of one of the special problems of the "psychological method." 
If reality is an eternal and all-inclusive consciousness, in which 
sensations and meanings are ordered according to a rational 
system, what must be the nature of the finite thought-process 
which apprehends this reality? In his previous articles Dewey 
had proposed the "psychological method" as an actual mode of 
investigation, and questions concerning the nature of the human 
thought-process naturally forced themselves upon his attention. 

The thought-process is, to begin with, a relating activity 
which gives meaning to experience. Says Dewey: "When 
Psychology recognizes that the relating activity of mind is one 
not exercised upon sensations, but one which supplies relations 
and thereby makes meaning (makes experience, as Kant said), 
Psychology will be in a position to explain, and thus to become 
Philosophy." 2 This statement raises the more specific question, 
what is meaning? 

Every idea, Dewey remarks, has two aspects: existence and 
meaning. "Recognizing that every psychical fact does have 
these two aspects, we shall, for the present, confine ourselves to 

1 Vol. XII, pp. 382-396. 

2 Ibid., p. 394. 

15 



1 6 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

asking the nature, function and origin of the aspect of meaning 
or significance — the content of the idea as opposed to its exis- 
tence." 1 The meaning aspect of the idea cannot be reduced to 
the centrally excited image existences which form a part of the 
existence-aspect of the idea. "I repeat, as existence, we have 
only a clustering of sensuous feelings, stronger and weaker." 2 
But the thing is not perceived as a clustering of feelings; the 
sensations are immediately interpreted as a significant object. 
"Perceiving, to restate a psychological commonplace, is inter- 
preting. The content of the perception is what is signified." 3 
Dewey's treatment of sensations, at this point, is somewhat 
uncertain. If it be a manifold that is given to the act of inter- 
pretation, Kant's difficulty is again presented. The bare sen- 
sations taken by themselves mean nothing, and yet everything 
does mean something in being apprehended. The conclusion 
should be that there is no such thing as mere existence. Dewey's 
judgment is undecided on this issue. "It is true enough," he 
says, "that without the idea as existence there would be no ex- 
perience; the sensuous clustering is a condition sine qua non of 
all, even the highest spiritual, consciousness. But it is none the 
less true that if we could strip any psychical existence of all its 
qualities except bare existence, there would be nothing left, not 
even existence, for our intelligence. ... If we take out of an 
experience all that it means, as distinguished from what it is — 
a particular occurrence at a certain time, there is no psychical 
experience. The barest fragment of consciousness that can be 
hit upon has meaning as well as being." 4 An interpretation of 
reality as truly organic would treat mechanical sensation as a 
pure fiction. But Dewey clings to 'existence' as a necessary 
'aspect' of the psychical fact. The terms and relations never 
entirely fuse, although they are indispensable to each other. 
There is danger that the resulting view of experience will be 
somewhat angular and structural. 

At one point, indeed, Dewey asserts that there is no such thing 

1 Op. cit„ p. 383. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., p. 384. 

4 Ibid. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 17 

as a merely immediate psychical fact, at least for our experience. 
"So far is it from being true that we know only what is imme- 
diately present in consciousness, that it should rather be said that 
what is immediately present is never known." 1 But in the next 
paragraph Dewey remarks: "That which is immediately present 
is the sensuous existence; that which is known is the content 
conveyed by this existence." 2 The sensation is not known, and 
therefore probably not experienced. In this case Dewey is 
departing from his own principles, by introducing non-exper- 
ienced factors into his interpretation of experience. The 
language is ambiguous. If nothing is immediately given, then 
the sensuous content is not so given. 

The 'sensuous existences' assumed by Dewey are the ghosts 
of Kant's 'manifold of sensation.' The difficulty comes out 
clearly in the following passage : " It is indifferent to the sensation 
whether it is interpreted as a cloud or as a mountain ; a danger 
signal, or a signal of open passage. The auditory sensation 
remains unchanged whether it is interpreted as an evil spirit 
urging one to murder, or as intra-organic, due to disordered blood- 
pressure. ... It is not the sensation in and of itself that means 
this or that object; it is the sensation as associated, composed, 
identified, or discriminated with other experiences; the sensation, 
in short, as mediated. The whole worth of the sensation for 
intelligence is the meaning it has by virtue of its relation to the 
rest of experience." 3 

There is an obvious parallel between this view of experience 
and Kant's. Kant, indeed, transcended the notion that ex- 
perience is a structure of sensations set in a frame-work of thought 
forms; but the first Critique undoubtedly leaves the average 
reader with such a conception of experience. It is unjust to 
Kant, however, to take the mechanical aspect of his thought as 
its most important phase. He stands, in the opinion of modern 
critics, at a half-way stage between the mechanism of the eigh- 
teenth century and the organic logic of the nineteenth, and his 
works point the way from the lower to the higher point of view. 

1 Op. cit., p. 385. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., p. 388. 



1 8 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

This was recognized by Hegel and by his followers in England. 
How does it happen, then, that Dewey, who was well-read in the 
philosophical literature of the day, should have persisted in a 
view of experience which appears to assume the externally or- 
ganized manifold of the Critique of Pure Reason? Or, to put the 
question more explicitly, why did he retain as a fundamental 
assumption Kant's 'manifold of sensations'? 

So far, Dewey has been concerned with the nature of meaning. 
He now turns to knowledge, and the knowing process as that 
which gives meaning to experience. Knowledge, or science, he 
says, is a process of following out the ideal element in experience. 
"The idealisation of science is simply a further development of 
this ideal element. It is, in short, only rendering explicit and 
definite the meaning, the idea, already contained in perception." 1 
But if perception is already organized by thought, the sensations 
must have been related in a 'productive imagination.' Dewey, 
however, does not recognize such a necessity. The factor of 
meaning is ideal, he continues, because it is not present as so 
much immediate content, but is present as symbolized or me- 
diated. But the question may be asked, "Whence' come the 
ideal elements which give to experience its meaning?" No 
answer can be given except by psychology, as an inquiry into 
the facts, as contrasted with the logical necessity of experience. 

Sensations acquire meaning through being identified with and 
discriminated from other sensations to which they are related. 
But it is not as mere existences that they are compared and re- 
lated, but as already ideas or meanings. "The identification 
is of the meaning of the present sensation with some meaning 
previously experienced, but which, although previously expe- 
rienced, still exists because it is meaning, and not occurrence." 2 
The existences to which meanings attach come and go, and are 
new for every new appearance of the idea in consciousness; but 
the meanings remain. "The experience, as an existence at a 
given time, has forever vanished. Its meaning, as an ideal 
quality, remains as long as the mind does. Indeed, its remaining 

1 Op. cit., p. 390. 

2 Ibid., p. 392. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 19 

is the remaining of the mind ; the conservation of the ideal quality 
of experience is what makes the mind a permanence." 1 

It is not possible, Dewey says, to imagine a primitive state in 
which unmeaning sensations existed alone. Meaning cannot 
arise out of that which has no meaning. "Sensations cannot 
revive each other except as members of one whole of meaning; 
and even if they could, we should have no beginning of significant 
experience. Significance, meaning, must be already there. 
Intelligence, in short, is the one indispensable condition of intel- 
ligent experience." 2 

Thinking is an act which idealizes experience by transforming 
sensations into an intelligible whole. It works by seizing upon 
the ideal element which is already there, conserving it, and de- 
veloping it. It produces knowledge by supplying relations 
to experience. Dewey realizes that his act of intelligence is 
similar to Kant's 'apperceptive unity.' He says: "The mention 
of Kant's name suggests that both his strength and his weakness 
lie in the line just mentioned. It is his strength that he recog- 
nizes that an apperceptive unity interpreting sensations through 
categories which constitute the synthetic content of self-con- 
sciousness is indispensable to experience. It is his weakness 
that he conceives this content as purely logical, and hence as 
formal." 3 Kant's error was to treat the self as formal and held 
apart from its material. "The self does not work with a priori 
forms upon an a posteriori material, but intelligence as ideal (or 
a priori) constitutes experience (or the a posteriori) as having 
meaning." 4 Dewey's standpoint here seems to be similar to 
that of Green. But as Kant's unity of apperception became for 
Green merely a symbol of the world's inherent intelligibility, the 
latter did not regard it as an actual process of synthesis. Dewey 
fails to make a distinction, which might have been useful to him, 
between Kant's unity of apperception and his productive imagi- 
nation. It is the latter which Dewey retains, and he tends to 
identify it with the empirical process of the understanding. 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 393. 

3 Ibid., p. 394. 

4 Ibid., p. 395. 



20 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

Knowing, psychologically considered, is a synthetic process. 
"And this is to say that experience grows as intelligence adds 
out of its own ideal content ideal quality. . . . The growth of 
the power of comparison implies not a formal growth, but a 
synthetic internal growth." 1 Dewey, of course, views under- 
standing as an integral part of reality's processes rather than as a 
process apart, but it is for him a very special activity, which 
builds up the meaning of experience. "Knowledge might be 
indifferently described, therefore, as a process of idealisation of 
experience, or of realisation of intelligence. It is each through 
the other. Ultimately the growth of experience must consist 
in the development out of itself by intelligence of its own im- 
plicit ideal content upon occasion of the solicitation of sensation." 2 

The difficulties of Dewey's original position are numerous. 
The relation of the self, as a synthetic activity, to the "Eternal 
Consciousness," in which meaning already exists in a completed 
form, is especially perplexing. Does the self merely trace out 
the meaning already present in reality, or is it a factor in the 
creation of meaning? It is clear that if the thinking process is a 
genuinely synthetic activity, imposing meaning on sensations, 
it literally 'makes the world' of our experience. But, on the 
other hand, if meaning is given to thought, as a part of its data, 
the self merely reproduces in a subjective experience the thought 
which exists objectively in the eternal mind. The dilemma arises 
as a result of Dewey's initial conception of reality as a structure 
of sensations and meanings. This conception of reality must be 
given up, if the notion of thought as a process of idealization is 
to be retained. 

In 1888, Dewey's Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human 
Understanding appeared, and during the two years following he 
appears to have become interested in ethical theory, the results 
of his study beginning to appear in 1890. Dewey's ethical 
theories have so important a bearing upon his logical theory as 
to demand special attention. They will be reserved, therefore, 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 396. (The last sentence forecasts Dewey's later contention that 
knowing is a specific act operating upon the occasion of need.) 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 21 

for a separate chapter, and attention will be given here to the 
more strictly logical studies of the period. 

The three years which intervened between the publication of 
the essay on "Knowledge as Idealisation" and the appearance 
of an article "On Some Current Conceptions of the term 'Self,' " 
in Mind (1890), 1 did not serve to divert Dewey's attention from 
the inquiries in which he had previously been interested. On the 
contrary, the later article shows how persistently his mind must 
have dwelt upon the problems connected with the notion of the 
self as a synthetic activity in experience. 

The immediate occasion for the article on the Self was the 
appearance of Professor Andrew Seth's work, Hegelianism and 
Personality (1889). Dewey appears to have been influenced by 
Seth at an even earlier period, 2 and he now found the lectures on 
Hegel stimulating in connection with his own problems about 
thought and reality. 

It will not be necessary to go into the details of Dewey's 
criticism of the three ideas of the self presented by Seth. Since 
it is Dewey's own position that is in question, it is better to begin 
with his account of the historical origin of these definitions, 
"chiefly as found in Kant, incidentally in Hegel as related to 
Kant." 3 Dewey turns to the 'Transcendental Deduction,' and 
follows Kant's description of the synthetic unity of apperception. 
"Its gist," he says, "in the second edition of the K.d.r.V., is the 
proof that the identity of self-consciousness involves the syn- 
thesis of the manifold of feelings through rules or principles which 
render this manifold objective, and that, therefore, the analytic 
identity of self -consciousness involves an objective synthetic 
unity of consciousness." 4 To say that self-consciousness is 
identical is a merely analytical proposition, and, as it stands, 
unfruitful. "But if we ask how we know this sameness or iden- 
tity of consciousness, the barren principle becomes wonderfully 
fruitful." 5 In order to know reality as mine, not only must the 

1 Vol. XV, pp. 58-74. 

2 See Mind, Vol. XI, 1886, p. 170. 

3 Ibid., p. 63. 

4 Ibid. 

5 Ibid., p. 64. 



H JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

consciousness that it is mine accompany each particular im- 
pression, but each must be known as an element in one conscious- 
ness. "The sole way of accounting for this analytic identity of 
consciousness is through the activity of consciousness in con- 
necting or 'putting together' the manifold of sense." 1 

In the 'Deduction' of the first Critique, Dewey continues, 
Kant begins with the consciousness of objects, rather than with 
the identity of self-consciousness. Here also consciousness 
implies a unity, which is not merely formal, but one which actually 
connects the manifold of sense by an act. "Whether, then, we 
inquire what is involved in mere sameness of consciousness, or 
what is involved in an objective world, we get the same answer: 
a consciousness which is not formal or analytic, but which is 
synthetic of sense, and which acts universally (according to 
principles) in this synthesis." 2 

The term 'Self,' as thus employed by Kant, Dewey says, is the 
correlative of the intelligible world. "It is the transcendental 
self looked at as 'there,' as a product, instead of as an activity or 
process." 3 This, however, by no means exhausts what Kant 
means by the self, for while he proceeds in the ' Deduction ' as if 
the manifold of sense and the synthetic unity of the self were 
strictly correlative, he assumes a different attitude elsewhere. 
The manifold of sense is something in relation to the thing-in- 
itself, and the forms of thought have a reference beyond their 
mere application to the manifold. In the other connections 
the self appears as something purely formal; something apart 
from its manifestation in experience. In view of the wider 
meaning of the self, Dewey asks, "Can the result of the trans- 
cendental deduction stand without further interpretation?" 
It would appear that the content of the self is not the same as 
the content of the known world. The self is too great to exhaust 
itself in relation to sensation. "Sense is, as it were, inadequate 
to the relations which constitute self-consciousness, and thus 
there must also remain a surplusage in the self, not entering into 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 65. 

3 Ibid. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 23 

the make-up of the known world." 1 This follows from the fact 
that, while the self is unconditioned, the manifold of sensation is 
conditioned, as given, by the forms of space and time. "Ex- 
perience can never be complete enough to have a content equal 
to that of self-consciousness, for experience can never escape its 
limitation through space and time. Self-consciousness is real, 
and not merely logical ; it is the ground of the reality of experience ; 
it is wider than experience, and yet is unknown except so far as 
it is reflected through its own determinations in experience, — 
this is the result of our analysis of Kant, the Ding-an-Sich being 
eliminated but the Kantian method and all presuppositions not 
involved in the notion of the Ding-an-Sich being retained." 2 

Dewey's interpretation of Kant's doctrine as presented in the 
'Deductions' is no doubt essentially correct. But granting 
that Kant found it necessary to introduce a synthesis in imagi- 
nation to account for the unity of experience and justify our 
knowledge of its relations, it must not be forgotten that this 
necessity followed from the nature of his presuppositions. If 
the primal reality is a 'manifold of sensations,' proceeding from a 
noumenal source, and lacking meaning and relations, it follows 
that the manifold must be gathered up into a unity before the 
experience which we actually apprehend can be accounted for. 
But if reality is experience, possessing order and coherence in its 
own nature, the productive imagination is rendered superfluous. 
Dewey, however, clings to the notion that thought is a "syn- 
thetic activity" which makes experience, and draws support 
from Kant for his doctrine. 

Dewey now inquires what relation this revised Kantian con- 
ception of the self bears to the view advanced by Seth, viz., that 
the idea of self-consciousness is the highest category of thought 
and explanation. Kant had tried to discover the different 
forms of synthesis, by a method somewhat artificial to be sure, 
and had found twelve of them. While Hegel's independent 
derivation and independent placing of the categories must be 
accepted, it does not follow that the idea of self-consciousness 
can be included in the list, even if it be considered the highest 

1 Op. cit., p. 67. 

2 Ibid., p. 68. 



24 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

category. "For it is impossible as long as we retain Kant's 
fundamental presupposition — the idea of the partial determina- 
tion of sensation by relation to perception, apart from its relation 
to conception — to employ self-consciousness as a principle of 
explaining any fact of experience." 1 It cannot be said of the 
self of Kant that it is simply an hypostatized category. "It is 
more, because the self of Kant ... is more than any category: 
it is a real activity or being." 2 

Hegel, Dewey continues, develops only one aspect of Kant's 
Critique, that is, the logical aspect, and consequently does not 
fulfil Kant's entire purpose. "This is, I repeat, not an immanent 
'criticism of categories' but an analysis of experience into its 
aspects and really constituent elements." 3 Dewey, as usual, 
shows his opposition to a 'merely logical' method in philosophy. 
He plainly indicates his dissatisfaction with the Hegelian develop- 
ment of Kant's standpoint. He is unfair to Hegel, however, in 
attributing to him a ' merely logical ' method. Kant's self was, as 
Dewey asserts, something more than a category of thought, but 
it is scarcely illuminating to say of Kant that his purpose was the 
analysis of experience into its 'constituent elements.' Kant did, 
indeed, analyze experience, but this analysis must be regarded 
as incidental to a larger purpose. No criticism need be made of 
Dewey's preference for the psychological, as opposed to the logical 
aspects of Kant's work. The only comment to be made is that 
this attitude is not in line with the modern development of 
idealism. 

The question which finally emerges, as the result of Dewey's 
inquiry, is this: What is the nature of this self-activity which is 
more than the mere category of self -consciousness? "As long 
as sensation was regarded as given by a thing-in-itself, it was 
possible to form a conception of the self which did not identify 
it with the world. But when sense is regarded as having meaning 
only because it is 'there' as determined by thought, just as 
thought is 'there' only as determining sense, it would seem either 
that the self is just their synthetic unity (thus equalling the 

1 Op. cit., p. 70. 

2 Ibid., p. 71. 

3 Ibid., 



. DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 2$ 

world) or that it must be thrust back of experience, and become 
a thing-in-itself. The activity of the self can hardly be a third 
something distinct from thought and from sense, and it cannot 
be their synthetic union. What, then, is it?" 1 Green, Dewey 
says, attempted to solve the difficulty by his "idea of a completely 
realized self making an animal organism the vehicle of its own 
reproduction in time." 2 This attempt was at least in the right 
direction, acknowledging as it did the fact that the self is some- 
thing more than the highest category of thought. 

Dewey admits his difficulties in a way that makes extended 
comment unnecessary. He does not challenge the validity of 
the Hegelian development of the Kantian categories, but pro- 
poses to make more of the self than the Hegelians ordinarily do. 
This synthetic self-activity must reveal itself as a concrete 
process; that is one of the demands of his psychological stand- 
point. It is impossible to foresee what this process would be as 
an actual fact of experience. 

Although the next article which is to be considered does not 
offer a direct answer to the problems which have so far been 
raised, it nevertheless indicates the general direction which 
Dewey's thought is to take. This article, on "The Present 
Position of Logical Theory," was published in the Monist in 
1 89 1. 3 Dewey appears at this time as the champion of the 
transcendental, or Hegelian logic, in opposition to formal and 
inductive logic. His attitude toward Hegel undergoes a marked 
change at this period. Dewey's general objection to formal 
logic is well expressed in the following passage: "It is assumed, 
in fine, that thought has a nature of its own independent of facts 
or subject-matter; that this thought, per se, has certain forms, 
and that these forms are not forms which the facts themselves 
take, varying with the facts, but are rigid frames, into which the 
facts are to be set. Now all of this conception — the notion that 
the mind has a faculty of thought apart from things, the notion 
that this faculty is constructed, in and of itself, with a fixed 
framework, the notion that thinking is the imposing of this fixed 

1 op. tit., p. 73. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Vol. II, pp. 1-17. 



26 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

framework on some unyielding matter called particular objects, 
or facts — all of this conception appears to me as highly scholas- 
tic." 1 The inductive logic, Dewey says, still clings to the notion 
of thought as a faculty apart from its material, operating with 
bare forms upon sensations. Kant had been guilty of this 
separation and never overcame it successfully. Because formal 
logic views thought as a process apart from the matter with 
which it has to deal, it can never be the logic of science. " For if 
science means anything, it is that our ideas, our judgments may 
in some degree reflect and report the fact itself. Science means, 
on one hand, that thought is free to attack and get hold of its 
subject-matter, and, on the other, that fact is free to break 
through into thought ; free to impress itself — or rather to express 
itself — in intelligence without vitiation or deflection. Scientific 
men are true to the instinct of the scientific spirit in fighting shy 
of a distinct a priori factor supplied to fact from the mind. 
Apriorism of this sort must seem like an effort to cramp the 
freedom of intelligence and of fact, to bring them under the yoke 
of fixed, external forms." 2 

In opposition to this formal, and, as he calls it, subjective 
standpoint in logic, Dewey stands for the transcendental logic, 
which supposes that there is some kind of vital connection be- 
tween thought and fact; "that thinking, in short, is nothing but 
the fact in its process of translation from brute impression to 
lucent meaning." 3 Hegel holds this view of logic. "This, then, 
is why I conceive Hegel — entirely apart from the value of any 
special results — to represent the quintessence of the scientific 
spirit. He denies not only the possibility of getting truth out 
of a formal, apart thought, but he denies the existence of any 
faculty of thought which is other than the expression of fact 
itself." 4 At another place Dewey expresses his view of Hegel as 
follows: "Relations of thought are, to Hegel, the typical forms 
of meaning which the subject-matter takes in its various pro- 
gressive stages of being understood." 5 

1 Op. cit., p. 4. 

2 Ibid., p. 12. 

3 Ibid., p. 3. 
*Ibid., p. 11. 
6 Ibid., p. 13. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 27 

Dewey's defence of the transcendental logic is vigorous. He 
maintains that the disrespect into which the transcendental logic 
had fallen, was due to the fact that the popular comprehension 
of the transcendental movement had been arrested at Kant, and 
had never gone on to Hegel. 

The objection made to Kant's standpoint is that it treated 
thought as a process over against experience, imposing its forms 
upon it from without. "Kant never dreams, for a moment, of 
questioning the existence of a special faculty of thought with its 
own peculiar and fixed forms. He states and restates that 
thought in itself exists apart from fact and occupies itself with 
fact given to it from without." 1 While Kant gave the death 
blow to a merely formal conception of thought, indirectly, and 
opened up the way for an organic interpretation, he did not 
achieve the higher standpoint himself. Remaining at the stand- 
point of Kant, therefore, the critic of the transcendental logic 
has much to complain of. Scientific men deal with facts, look 
to them for guidance, and must suppose that thought and fact 
pass into each other directly, and without vitiation or deflection. 
They are correct in opposing a conception which would inter- 
pose conditions between thought on the one hand and the facts 
on the other. 

But Hegel is true to the scientific spirit. "When Hegel calls 
thought objective he means just what he says: that there is no 
special, apart faculty of thought belonging to and operated by a 
mind existing separate from the outer world. What Hegel 
means by objective thought is the meaning, the significance of 
the fact itself; and by methods of thought he understands simply 
the processes in which this meaning of fact is evolved." 2 

If Hegel is true to the scientific spirit; if his logic presupposes 
that there is an intrinsic connection of thought and fact, and 
views science simply as the progressive realization of the world's 
ideality, then the only questions to be asked about his logic are 
questions of fact concerning his treatment of the categories. 
Is the world such a connected system as he holds it to be? "And, 
if a system, does it, in particular, present such phases (such 

1 Op. cit., p. 11. 

2 Ibid., p. 12 f. 



28 JOHN DEWETS LOGICAL THEORY. 

relations, categories) as Hegel shows forth?" 1 These questions 
are wholly objective. Such a logic as Hegel's could scarcely 
make headway when it was first produced, because the significance 
of the world, its ideal character, had not been brought to light 
through the sciences. We are now reaching a stage, however, 
where science has brought the ideality of the world into the 
foreground, where it may become as real and objective a material 
of study as molecules and vibrations. 

This appreciation of Hegel would seem to indicate that Dewey 
has finally grasped the significance of Hegel's development of 
the Kantian standpoint. A close reading of the article, however, 
dispels this impression. Dewey believes that he has found in 
Hegel a support for his own psychological method in philosophy. 
It is scarcely necessary to say that Hegel's standpoint was any- 
thing but psychological. Dewey has already given up Kant; 
he will presently desert Hegel. A psychological interpretation 
of the thought-process in its relations to reality is not compatible 
with the critical method in philosophy. 

In the next article to be examined, "The Superstition of 
Necessity," in the Monist (1893), 2 Dewey begins to attain the 
psychological description of thought at which he had been aiming. 
This article was suggested, as Dewey indicates in a foot-note, by 
Mr. C. S. Pierce's article, "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined," 
in the Monist (1892). 3 Although Dewey acknowledges his in- 
debtedness to Pierce for certain suggestions, the two articles have 
little in common. 

Dewey had consistently maintained that thought is a synthetic 
activity through which reality is idealized or takes on meaning. 
Is it from this standpoint that he approaches the subject of 
necessity. The following passage reveals the connection between 
his former position and the one that he is now approaching: 
"The whole, although first in the order of reality, is last in the 
order of knowledge. The complete statement of the whole is 
the goal, not the beginning of wisdom. We begin, therefore, 
with fragments, which are taken for wholes; and it is only by 

1 Op. cit., p. 14. 

2 Vol. Ill, pp. 362-379. 

3 Vol. II, pp. 321-337. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 29 

piecing together these fragments, and by the transformation of 
them involved in this combination, that we arrive at the real 
fact. There comes a stage at which the recognition of the unity 
begins to dawn upon us, and yet, the tradition of the many 
distinct wholes survives; judgment has to combine these two 
contradictory conceptions; it does so by the theory that the 
dawning unity is an effect necessarily produced by the inter- 
action of the former wholes. Only as the consciousness of the 
unity grows still more is it seen that instead of a group of inde- 
pendent facts, held together by 'necessary' ties, there is one 
reality, of which we have been apprehending various fragments 
in succession and attributing to them a spurious wholeness and 
independence. We learn (but only at the end) that instead of 
discovering and then connecting together a number of separate 
realities, we have been engaged in the progressive definition of 
one fact." 1 

Dewey adds to his idea that our knowledge of reality is a 
progressive development of its implicit ideality through a syn- 
thetic thought-process, the specification that the process of 
idealization occurs in connection with particular crises and situa- 
tions. There comes a stage, he says, when unity begins to dawn 
and meaning emerges. Necessity is a term used in connection 
with these transitions from partial to greater realization of the 
world's total meaning. Necessity is a middle term, or go-be- 
tween. It marks a critical stage in the development of know- 
ledge. No necessity attaches to a whole, as such. u Qua whole, 
the fact simply is what it is; while the parts, instead of being 
necessitated either by one another or by the whole, are the ana- 
lyzed factors constituting, in their complete circuit, the whole." 2 
But when the original whole breaks up, through its inability to 
comprehend new facts under its unity, a process of judgment 
occurs which aims at the establishment of a new unity. "The 
judgment of necessity, in other words, is exactly and solely the 
transition in our knowledge from unconnected judgments to a 
more comprehensive synthesis. Its value is just the value of 
this transition; as negating the old partial and isolated judg- 

1 The Monist, Vol. Ill, 1893, p. 364. 

2 Ibid., p. 363. 



30 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

ments — in its backward look — necessity has meaning; in its 
forward look — with reference to the resulting completely or- 
ganized subject-matter — it is itself as false as the isolated judg- 
ments which it replaces." 1 We say that things must be so, when 
we do not know that they are so; that is, while we are in course 
of determining what they are. Necessity has its value exclusively 
in this transition. 

Dewey attempts to show, in a discussion which need not be 
followed in detail, that there is nothing radical in his view, and 
that it finds support among the idealists and empiricists alike. 
Thinkers of both schools (he quotes Caird and Venn) admit that 
the process of judgment involves a change in objects, at least as 
they are for us. There is a transformation of their value and 
meaning. "This point being held in common, both schools 
must agree that the progress of judgment is equivalent to a change 
in the value of objects — that objects as they are for us, as known, 
change with the development of our judgments." 2 Dewey pro- 
poses to give a more specific description of this process of trans- 
formation, and especially, to show how the idea of necessity is 
involved in it. 

The process of transformation is occasioned by practical 
necessity. Men have a tendency to take objects as just so much 
and no more ; to attach to a given subject-matter these predicates, 
and iio others. There is a principle of inertia, or economy, in 
the mind, which leads it to maintain objects in their status quo 
as long as possible. "There is no doubt that the reluctance of 
the mind to give up an object once made lies deep in its 
economies. ... I wish here to call attention to the fact that 
the forming of a number of distinct objects has its origin in 
practical needs of our nature. The analysis and synthesis which 
is first made is that of most practical importance. . . . " 3 We 
tend to retain such objects as we have, and it is not until "the 
original subject-matter has been overloaded with various and 
opposing predicates that we think of doubting the correctness of 
our first judgments, of putting our first objects under suspicion." 4 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 364 f. 

3 Ibid., p. 367. 

4 Ibid., p. 366. 



DEVELOPMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL STANDPOINT. 3 1 

Once the Ptolemaic system is well established, cycles and epi- 
cycles are added without number, rather than reconstruct the 
original object. When, finally, we are compelled to make some 
change, we tend to invent some new object to which the predicates 
can attach. "When qualities arise so incompatible with the 
object already formed that they cannot be referred to that object, 
it is easier to form a new object on their basis than it is to doubt 
the correctness of the old. . . . ' n Let us suppose, then, that 
under stress of practical need, we refer the new predicates to 
some new object, and have, as a consequence, two objects. 
(Dewey illustrates this situation by specific examples.) This 
separation of the two objects cannot continue long, before we 
begin to discover that the two objects are related elements in a 
larger whole. "The wall of partition between the two separate 
'objects' cannot be broken at one attack; they have to be worn 
away by the attrition arising from their slow movement into one 
another. It is the 'necessary' influence which one exerts upon 
the other that finally rubs away the separateness and leaves them 
revealed as elements of one unified whole." 2 

The concept of necessity has its validity in such a movement of 
judgment as has been described. "Necessity, as the middle 
term, is the mid-wife which, from the dying isolation of judgments, 
delivers the unified judgment just coming into life — it being 
understood that the separateness of the original judgments is 
not as yet quite negated, nor the unity of the coming judgment 
quite attained." 3 The judgment of necessity connects itself 
with certain facts in the situation which are immediately con- 
cerned with our practical activities. These are facts which, 
before the crisis arises, have been neglected; they are elements in 
.the situation which have been regarded as unessential, as not 
yet making up a part of the original object. "Although after 
our desire has been met they have been eliminated as accidental, 
as irrelevant, yet when the experience is again desired their 
integral membership in the real fact has to be recognized. This 
is done under the guise of considering them as means which are 

1 Op. cit., p. 367. 

2 Ibid., p. 368. 

3 Ibid., p. 363. 



32 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

necessary to bring about the end." 1 We have the if so, then so 
situation. "If we are to reach an end we must take certain 
means; while so far as we want an undefined end, an end in 
general, conditions which accompany it are mere accidents." 2 
The end of this process of judgment in which necessity appears 
as a half-way stage, is the unity of reality; a whole into which 
the formerly discordant factors can be gathered together. 

Only a detailed study of the original text, with its careful 
illustrations, can furnish a thorough understanding of Dewey's 
position. Enough has been said, however, to show that this 
psychological account of the judgment process is a natural 
outgrowth of his former views, and that, as it stands, it is still in 
conformity with his original idealism. The article as a whole 
marks a half-way stage in Dewey's philosophical development. 
Looking backward, it is a partial fulfilment of the demands of 
"The Psychological Standpoint." It is a psychological descrip- 
tion of the processes whereby self-consciousness specifies itself 
into parts which are still related to the whole. Looking forward, 
it forecasts the functional theory of knowledge. We have, to 
begin with, objects given as familiar or known experiences. So 
long as these are not put under suspicion or examined, they simply 
are themselves, or are non-cognitionally experienced. But on 
the occasion of a conflict in experience between opposed facts 
and their meanings, a process of judgment arises, whose function 
is to restore unity. It is in this process of judgment as an opera- 
tion in the interests of the unity of experience, that the concepts, 
necessity and contingency, have their valid application and use. 
They are instruments for effecting a transformation of experience. 
This is the root idea of functional instrumentalism. It is ap- 
parent, therefore, that Dewey's later functionalism resulted from 
the natural growth and development of the psychological stand- 
point which he adopted at the beginning of his philosophical 
career. 

1 Op. oil., p. 372. 

2 Ibid. 



CHAPTER III 

"MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE" 

Dewey's ethical theory, as has already been indicated, stands 
in close relation to his general theory of knowledge. Since it has 
been found expedient to treat the ethical theory separately, it 
will be necessary to go back some two years and trace it from its 
beginnings. The order of arrangement that has been chosen is 
fortunate in this respect, since it brings into close connection two 
articles which are really companion pieces, in spite of the two- 
year interval which separates them. These are "The Super- 
stition of Necessity," which was considered at the close of the 
last chapter, and "Moral Theory and Practice," an article 
published in The International Journal of Ethics, in January, 
1891. 1 This latter article, now to be examined, is one of Dewey's 
first serious undertakings in the field of ethical theory, and prob- 
ably represents some of the results of his study in connection with 
his text-book, Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, published in 
the same year (1891). 

The immediate occasion for the article is explained by Dewey 
in his introductory remarks: " In the first number of this journal 
four writers touch upon the same question, — the relation of 
moral theory to moral practice." 2 The four writers mentioned 
were Sidgwick, Adler, Bosanquet, and Salter. None of them, 
according to Dewey, had directly discussed the relation of moral 
theory to practice. "But," he says, "finding the subject touched 
upon ... in so many ways, I was led to attempt to clear up 
my own ideas." 3 

There seems to exist, Dewey continues, "the idea that moral 
theory is something other than, or something beyond, an analysis 
of conduct, — the idea that it is not simply and wholly ' the theory 

1 Vol. I, pp. 186-203. 

2 Ibid., p. 186. 

3 Ibid. 

33 



34 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

of practice.'" 1 It is often denned, for instance, as an inquiry 
into the metaphysics of morals, which has nothing to do with 
practice. But, Dewey believes, there must be some intrinsic 
connection between the theory of morals and moral practice. 
Such intrinsic connection may be denied on the ground that 
practice existed long before theory made its appearance. Codes 
of morality were in existence before Plato, Kant, or Spencer rose 
to speculate upon them. This raises the question, What is 
theory? 

Moral theory is nothing more than a proposed act in idea. 
It is insight, or perception of the relations and bearings of the 
contemplated act. "It is all one with moral insight, and moral 
insight is the recognition of the relationships in hand. This is a 
very tame and prosaic conception. It makes moral insight, and 
therefore moral theory, consist simply in the everyday workings 
of the same ordinary intelligence that measures drygoods, drives 
nails, sells wheat, and invents the telephone." 2 The nature of 
theory as idea is more definitely described. "It is the construc- 
tion of the act in thought against its outward construction. It 
is, therefore, the doing, — the act itself, in its emerging." 3 

Theory is practice in idea, or as foreseen ; it is the perception of 
what ought to be done. This, at least, is what moral theory is. 
Dewey's demand that fact and theory must have some intrinsic 
connection, unsatisfied in the articles reviewed in the previous 
chapter, is met here by discovering a connecting link in action. 
Theory is "the doing, — the act itself in its emerging. 11 The reduc- 
tion of thought to terms of action, here implied, is a serious step. 
It marks a new tendency in Dewey's speculation. Dewey does 
not claim, in the present article, that his remarks hold good for 
all theory. "Physical science," he remarks, "does deal with 
abstractions, with hypothesis. It says, 'If this, then that.' 
It deals with the relations of conditions and not with facts, or 
individuals, at all. It says, 'I have nothing to do with your 
concrete falling stone, but I can tell you this, that it is a law of 
falling bodies that, etc' " 4 But moral theory is compelled to deal 

1 Op. cit., p. 187. 

2 Ibid., p. 188. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Ibid., p. 191 f . 



" MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE:' 35 

with concrete situations. It must be a theory which can be 
applied directly to the particular case. Moral theory cannot 
exist simply in a book. Since, moreover, there is no such thing 
as theory in the abstract, there can be no abstract theory of 
morals. 

There can be no difficulty, Dewey believes, in understanding 
moral theory as action in idea. All action that is intelligent, all 
conduct, that is, involves theory. " For any act (as distinct from 
mere impulse) there must be 'theory,' and the wider the act, 
the greater its import, the more exigent the demand for theory." 1 
This does not, however, answer the question how any particular 
moral theory, the Kantian, the Hedonistic, or the Hegelian, is 
related to action. These systems present, not 'moral ideas' as 
explained above, but 'ideas about morality.' What relation 
have ideas about morality to specific moral conduct? 

The answer to this question is to be obtained through an under- 
standing of the nature of the moral situation. If an act is moral, 
it must be intelligent; as moral conduct, it implies insight into 
the situation at hand. This insight is obtained by an examina- 
tion and analysis of the concrete situation. "This is evidently a 
work of analysis. Like every analysis, it requires that the one 
making it be in possession of certain working tools. I cannot 
resolve this practical situation which faces me by merely looking 
at it. I must attack it with such instruments of analysis as I 
have at hand. What we call moral rules are precisely such tools 
of analysis:' 2 The Golden Rule is such an instrument of 
analysis. Taken by itself, it offers no direct information as to 
what is to be done. "The rule is a counsel of perfection; it is a 
warning that in my analysis of the moral situation (that is, of 
the conditions of practice) I be impartial as to the effects on 
me and thee.' " 3 Every rule which is of any use at all is em- 
ployed in a similar fashion. 

But this is not, so far, a statement of the nature of moral 
theory, since only particular rules have been considered. Ethical 
theory, in its wider significance, is a reflective process in which, as 

1 Op. cit., p. 189. 

2 Ibid., p. 194. Author's Italics. 

3 Ibid. 



36 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

one might say, the ' tools of analysis ' are shaped and adapted to 
their work. These rules are not fixed things, made once and for 
all, but of such a nature that they preserve their effectiveness 
only as they are constantly renewed and reshaped. Ethical 
theory brings the Golden Rule together with other general ideas, 
conforms them to each other, and in this way gives the moral 
rule a great scope in practice. All moral theory, therefore, is 
finally linked up with practice. "It bears much the same rela- 
tion to the particular rule as this to the special case. It is a tool 
for the analysis of its meaning, and thereby a tool for giving it 
greater effect." 1 In ethical theory we find moral rules in the 
making. Ideas about morals are simply moral ideas in the course 
of being formed. 

Dewey presents here an instrumental theory of knowledge and 
concepts. But it differs widely from the instrumentalism of the 
Neo-Hegelian school both in its form and derivation. Dewey 
reaches his instrumentalism through a psychological analysis of 
the judgment process. He finds that theory is related to fact 
through action, and since he had been unable to give a concrete 
account of this relationship at a previous time, the conclusion 
may be regarded as a discovery of considerable moment for his 
philosophical method. Dewey's instrumentalism rests upon a 
very special psychological interpretation, which puts action 
first and thought second. Unable to discover an overt connec- 
tion between fact and thought, he delves underground for it, and 
finds it in the activities of the nervous organism. This dis- 
covery, he believes, solves once and for all the ancient riddle of 
the relation of thought to reality. 

In the concluding part of the article Dewey takes up the con- 
sideration of moral obligation. "What is the relation of know- 
ledge, of theory, to that Ought which seems to be the very essence 
of moral conduct?" 2 The answer anticipates in some measure 
the position which was taken later, as has been seen, in regard to 
necessity. The concept of obligation, like that of necessity, 
Dewey believes, has relevance only for the judgment situation. 
"But," Dewey says, "limiting the question as best I can, I 

1 Op. cit., p. 195. 

2 Ibid., p. 198. 



"MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE:' 2>7 

should say (first) that the 'ought' always rises from and falls 
back into the 'is,' and (secondly) that the 'ought' is itself an 
'is,' — the 'is' of action." 1 Obligation is not something added 
to the conclusion of a judgment, something which gives a moral 
aspect to what had been a coldly intellectual matter. The 
'ought' finds an integral place in the judgment process. "The 
difference between saying, 'this act is the one to be done . . . ,' 
and saying, 'The act ought to be done,' is merely verbal. The 
analysis of action is from the first an analysis of what is to be 
done; how, then, should it come out excepting with a 'this 
should be done'?" 2 The peculiarity of the 'ought' is that it 
applies to conduct or action, whereas the 'is' applies to the facts. 
It has reference to doing, or acting, as the situation demands. 
"This, then, is the relation of moral theory and practice. Theory 
is the cross-section of the given state of action in order to know 
the conduct that should be ; practice is the realization of the idea 
thus gained: in is theory in action." 3 

The parallel between this article and "The Superstition of 
Necessity" is too obvious to require formulation, and the same 
criticism that applies to the one is applicable to the other. "The 
Superstition of Necessity" is more detailed and concrete in its 
treatment of the judgment process than this earlier article, as 
might be expected, but the fundamental position is essentially 
the same. The synthetic activity of the self, the thought- 
process, finally appears as the servant of action, or, more exactly, 
as itself a special mode of organic activity in general. 

From the basis of the standpoint which he had now attained 
Dewey attempted a criticism of Green's moral theory, in two 
articles in the Philosophical Review, in 1892 and 1893. The 
first of these, entitled "Green's Theory of the Moral Motive," 4 
appeared almost two years after the article on "Moral Theory 
and Practice." The continuity of Dewey's thought during the 
intervening period, however, is indicated by the fact that the 
first four pages of the article to be considered are given over to 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 202. 

3 Ibid., p. 203. 

4 Philosophical Review, Vol. I, 1892, pp. 593-612. 



38 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

an introductory discussion which repeats in almost identical 
terms the position taken in "Moral Theory and Practice." 
Dewey himself calls attention to this fact in a foot-note. 

There must be, Dewey again asserts, some vital connection of 
theory with practice. "Ethical theory must be a general state- 
ment of the reality involved in every moral situation. It must 
be action stated in its more generic terms, terms so generic that 
every individual action will fall within the outlines it sets forth. 
If the theory agrees with these requirements, then we have for 
use in any special case a tool for analyzing that case; a method 
for attacking and reducing it, for laying it open so that the action 
called for in order to meet, to satisfy it, may readily appear." 1 
Dewey argues that moral theory cannot possibly give directions 
for every concrete case, but that it by no means follows that theory 
can stand aside from the specific case and say: "What have I to 
so with thee? Thou art empirical, and I am the metaphysics of 
conduct." 

Dewey's preliminary remarks are introductory to a considera- 
tion of Green's ethical theory. "His theory would, I think," 
Dewey says, "be commonly regarded as the best of the modern 
attempts to form a metaphysic of ethic. I wish, using this as 
type, to point out the inadequacy of such metaphysical theories, 
on the ground that they fail to meet the demand just made of 
truly ethical theory, that it lend itself to translation into con- 
crete terms, and thereby to the guidance, the direction of actual 
conduct." 2 Dewey recognizes that Green is better than his 
theory, but says that the theory, taken in logical strictness, 
cannot meet individual needs. 

Dewey makes a special demand of Green's theory. He 
demands, that is, that it supply a body of rules, or guides to 
action which can be employed by the moral agent as tools of 
analysis in cases requiring moral judgment. It is evident in 
advance that Green's theory was built upon a different plan, 
and can not meet the conditions which Dewey prescribes. The 
general nature of Green's inquiry is well stated in the following 
summary by Professor Thilly: "The truth in Green's thought is 

1 Op. cit., p. 596. 

2 Ibid., p. 597. 



"MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE:' 39 

this: the purpose of all social devotion and reform is, after all, 
the perfection of man on the spiritual side, the development of 
men of character and ideals. . . . The final purpose of all moral 
endeavor must be the realization of an attitude of the human 
soul, of some form of noble consciousness in human personalities. 
... It is well enough to feed and house human bodies, but the 
paramount question will always be: What kinds of souls are to 
dwell in these bodies?" 1 To put the matter in more technical 
terms, Green is concerned with ends and values. His question 
is not, What is the best means of accomplishing a given purpose, 
but, What end is worth attaining? Such an inquiry has no 
immediate relation to action. It may lead to conclusions which 
become determining factors in action, but the process of inquiry 
has no direct reference to conduct. Dewey, having reduced 
thought to a function of activity, must proceed, by logical 
necessity, to carry the same reduction into the field of theory in 
general. This he does in thorough style. His demand that 
moral theory shall concern itself with concrete and 'specific' 
situations is a result of the same tendency. Since action can 
only be described as response to a 'situation,' thought, as a 
function of activity, must likewise be directed upon a 'situation.' 
Conduct in general and values in general become impossible 
under his system, because there is no such thing as an activity- 
in-general of the organism. Ends, in other words, exist only for 
thought, when thought is interpreted as transcending action, 
and being, in some sense, self-contained. When thought is 
interpreted as a kind of 'indirect activity,' its capacity for meta- 
physical inquiry vanishes along with its independence. 

It would have been more in keeping with sound criticism had 
Dewey himself taken note of the important divergence in aim 
and intent between his work and Green's. As a consequence of 
his failure to do so, he fails, necessarily, to do justice to Green's 
standpoint. The criticism which he directs against Green's 
moral theory may be briefly summed up as follows. 

Green tends to repeat the Kantian separation of the self as 
reason from the self as want or desire. "The dualism between 

1 History of Philosophy, p. 555. 



40 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

reason and sense is given up, indeed, but only to be replaced by a 
dualism between the end which would satisfy the self as a unity 
or whole, and that which satisfies it in the particular circumstances 
of actual conduct." 1 As a consequence of the separation of the 
ideal from the actual, no action can satisfy the whole self, and 
thus no action can be truly moral. "No thorough-going theory 
of total depravity ever made righteousness more impossible to 
the natural man than Green makes it to a human being by the 
very constitution of his being. . . . " 2 Dewey traces this 
separation of the self as reason from the self as desire through 
those passages in which Green describes the moral agent as one 
who distinguishes himself from his desires (Book II, Prolegomena 
to Ethics). "The process of moral experience involves, therefore, 
a process in which the self, in becoming conscious of its want, 
objectifies that want by setting it over against itself; distinguish- 
ing the want from self and self from want. . . . Now this theory 
so far might be developed in either of two directions." 3 

In the first place, the self-distinguishing process may be an 
activity by means of which the self specifies its own activity and 
satisfaction. "The particular desires and ends would be the 
modes in which the self relieved itself of its abstractness, its 
undeveloped character, and assumed concrete existence. . . . 
The unity of the self would stand in no opposition to the particu- 
larity of the special desire; on the contrary, the unity of the self 
and the manifold of definite desires would be the synthetic and 
analytic aspects of one and the same reality, neither having any 
advantage metaphysical or ethical over the other ! " 4 But Green, 
unfortunately, does not develop his theory in this concrete 
direction. The self does not specify itself in the particulars, but 
remains apart from them. "The objectification is not of the 
self in the special end; but the self remains behind setting the 
special object over against itself as not adequate to itself. . . . 
The unity of the self sets up an ideal of satisfaction for itself as it 

1 Philosophical Review, Vol. I, 1892, p. 598. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., p. 599- 

4 Ibid. Compare with the passage in "Psychology as Philosophic Method," 
Mind, Vol. XI, p. 9. 



"MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE:' 4 1 

withdraws from the special want, and this ideal set up through 
negation of the particular desire and its satisfaction constitutes 
the moral ideal. It is forever unrealizable, because it forever 
negates the special activities through which alone it might, after 
all, realize itself." 1 In completing this argument Dewey refers 
to certain well-known passages in the Prolegomena to Ethics , 
in which Green states that the moral ideal is never completely 
attainable. Green's abstract conception of the self as that which 
forever sets itself over against its desires is, Dewey argues, not 
only useless as an ideal for action, but positively opposed to moral 
striving. "It supervenes, not as a power active in its own satis- 
faction, but to make us realize the unsatisfactoriness of such 
seeming satisfactions as we may happen to get, and to keep us 
striving for something which we can never get!" 2 The most 
that can be made of Green's moral ideal is to conceive it as the 
bare form of unity in conduct. Employed as a tool of analy- 
sis, as a moral rule, it might tell us, "Whatever the situation, 
seek for its unity." But it can scarcely go even as far as this in 
the direction of concreteness, for it says : " No unity can be found 
in the situation because the situation is particular, and therefore 
set over against the unity." 3 

Most students of Green would undoubtedly say that this 
account of his moral theory is entirely one-sided, and fails to 
reckon with certain elements which should properly be taken into 
account. In the first place, Green is defining the moral agent as 
he finds him, and is reporting what seems to him a fact when he 
says that the moral ideal is too high to be realized in this life. 
Having a spiritual nature, man fails to find satisfaction in the 
goods of natural life. Dewey should address himself to the facts 
in refuting Green's analysis of human nature. In the second 
place, with respect to Green's separation of the self as unity from 
the self as a manifold of desires, Dewey's criticism may be flatly 
rejected. Green raises the question himself: " ' Do you mean,' 
it may be asked, 'to assert the existence of a mysterious abstract 
entity which you call the self of a man, apart from all his par- 

1 Op. cit., p. 600. 

2 Ibid., p. 601. 

3 Ibid., p. 602. 



42 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

ticular feelings, desires, and thoughts — all the experience of his 
inner life?'" 1 Green takes time to state his position as clearly 
as possible. He repudiates the idea of an abstract self apart 
from desire. The following passage is typical of his remarks: 
"Just as we hold that our desires, feelings, and thoughts would 
not be what they are — would not be those of a man — if not re- 
lated to a subject which distinguishes itself from each and all of 
them; so we hold that this subject would not be what it is, if it 
were not related to the particular feelings, desires, and thoughts, 
which it thus distinguishes from and presents to itself." 2 It will 
be remembered also, that in moral action the agent identifies 
himself with his desires, or adopts them as his own, and the 
ability to do this is the chief mark of human intelligence. But 
man could not identify himself with his desires, or 'specify him- 
self in them,' as Dewey says, did he not at the same time have 
the capacity to differentiate himself from them. 

Dewey's further remarks on Green's ideal need not be followed 
in detail, since they rest upon a misapprehension of Green's 
purpose, and add little to what he has already said. Taking the 
moral ideal as something that can never be realized in this life, 
Dewey inquires what use can be made of it. He considers three 
modes in which Green might have given content to the ideal, as a 
working principle, and finds that it cannot be made, in any of 
these ways, to serve as a tool of analysis. Green was not pre- 
pared to meet these 'pragmatic' requirements. He did not 
propose his ideal as a principle of conduct, in Dewey's sense; he 
stated that, as a matter of fact, man is more than natural, and 
that, as such a being, his ideals can never be completely met by 
natural objects. How man is to act, in view of his spiritual 
nature, is a further question : but the realization which the indi- 
vidual has of his own spiritual nature must of necessity be a 
large factor in the determination of his conduct. The ' Spiritual 
Nature,' in Green's terminology, meant a 'not-natural' nature, 
and ' not-natural ' in turn meant a nature that is not definable in 
mechanical or biological terms. Dewey's criticism, therefore, 
went wide of the mark. 

1 Prolegomena to Ethics, third ed., p. 103. 

2 Ibid., p. 104. 



"MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE." 43 

In November, 1893, Dewey followed his criticism of Green's 
moral motive by a second article in the Philosophical Review 
on "Self-realization as the Moral Ideal." 1 It continues the 
criticism which has already been made of Green, but from a 
different point of departure. 

The idea of self-realization in ethics, Dewey begins, may be 
helpful or harmful according to the way in which the ideas 
of the self and its realization are worked out in the concrete. 
The mere idea of a self to be realized is, of course, abstract; it is 
merely the statement of a problem, which needs to be worked out 
and given content. By way of introducing his own idea of self- 
realization, Dewey proposes to criticize a certain conception of 
the self which he finds in current discussion. "The notion which 
I wish to criticize," he says, "is that of the self as a presupposed 
fixed schema or outline, while realization consists in the filling up 
of this schema. The notion which I would suggest as substitute 
is that of the self as always a concrete specific activity; and, there- 
fore, (to anticipate) of the identity of self and realization." 2 
Such a presupposed fixed self is to be found in Green's "Eternally 
complete Consciousness." 

The idea of self-realization implies capacities or possibilities. 
To translate capacity into actuality, as the conception of the 
fixed self seems to do, is to vitiate the whole idea of possibility. 
There must, then, be some conception of unrealized powers 
which will meet this difficulty. The way to a valid conception 
is through the realization that capacities are always specific. 
"The capacities of a child, for example, are not simply of a child, 
not of a man, but of this child, not of any other." 3 Whatever 
else capacity may be, whether infinite or not, it must be an ele- 
ment in an actual situation. As specific things, moreover, 
capacities reside in activities, which are now going on. The 
capacity of a child to become a musician consists in this fact: 
"Even now he has a certain quickness, vividness, and plasticity 
of vision, a certain deftness of hand, and a certain motor coordi- 

1 Vol. II, pp. 652-664. 

2 Ibid., p. 653. 

3 Ibid., p. 655. 



44 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

nation by which his hand is stimulated to work in harmony with 
his eye." 1 

How do these specific, actual activities come to be called 
capacities? ' There is a peculiar psychological reason for this 
which James has pointed out, in his statement that essence "is 
that which is so important for my interests that, comparatively, 
other properties may be omitted." 2 When we pay attention to 
any activity, there is a natural tendency to select only that 
portion of it that is of immediate interest, and to exclude the 
rest as irrelevant. "In the act of vision, for example," Dewey 
tells us, "the thing that seems nearest us, that which claims con- 
tinuously our attention, is the eye itself. We thus come to 
abstract the eye from all special acts of seeing; we make the eye 
the essential thing in sight, and conceive of the circumstances of 
vision as indeed circumstances; as more or less accidental con- 
comitants of the permanent eye." 3 There is no eye in general; 
the eye is always given along with other circumstances which 
in their totality make up a concrete seeing situation. Neverthe- 
less, we abstract the eye from other circumstances and set it up 
as the essence of seeing. But we cannot retain the eye in abso- 
lute abstraction, because the concrete circumstances of vision 
force themselves upon the attention. So we lump these together 
on the other side as a new object, and take as their essence the 
vibrations of ether. " The eye now becomes the capacity of seeing; 
the vibrations of ether, conditions required for the exercise of the ca- 
pacity." 4 ' We keep the two abstractions, but try to restore the 
unity of the situation through taking one as capacity and the 
other as the condition of the exercise of capacity. 

But we cannot stop even with this double abstraction. "The 
eye in general and the vibrations in general do not, even in their 
unity, constitute the act of vision. A multitude of other factors 
are included." 5 Preserving the original 'core' as capacity, we 
tend to treat all the attendant circumstances which occur fre- 

1 Op. cit., p. 656. 

2 Ibid., p. 657. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Ibid., p. 658. Author's italics. 

5 Ibid. 



"MORAL THEORY AND PRACTICE:' 45 

quently enough to require taking account of, as conditions which 
help realize the abstracted reality called capacity. 

The discussion here is very much like that in "The Super- 
stition of Necessity" (published in the same year), which was 
reviewed in the last chapter. Dewey calls attention to this 
connection in a foot-note, remarking that he has already de- 
veloped at greater length "the idea that necessity and possibility 
are simply the two correlative abstractions into which the one 
reality falls apart during the process of our conscious apprehen- 
sion of it." 1 The danger, Dewey says, is that the merely relative 
character of a given capacity may be overlooked, and that it 
may be ontologized into a fixed entity. This is the error, he 
thinks, into which Green fell. The ideal self, as that which 
capacity may realize, is ontologized into an already existent fact. 
Then we get a separation between the present self, as capacity, 
and the ideal self which is to be realized. The self already real- 
ized is opposed to the self as yet ideal. "This 'realized self 
is no reality by itself; it is simply our partial conception of the 
self erected into an entity. Recognizing its incomplete character, 
we bring in what we have left out and call it the 'ideal self.' 
Then by way of dealing with the fact that we have not two selves 
here at all, but simply a less and a more adequate insight into the 
same self, we insert the idea of one of these selves realizing the 
other." 2 It is in this manner that error arises. 

But what is the correct attitude toward the self? First of all, 
the self must be conceived as "a working, practical self, carrying 
within the rhythm of its own process both ' realized ' and ' ideal ' 
self. The current ethics of the self . . . are too apt to stop with 
a metaphysical definition, which seems to solve problems in 
general, but at the expense of the practical problems which alone 
really demand or admit solution." 3 The first point of the argu- 
ment is that the self activity is individual, concrete, and specific, 
here and now, and the second point is that if the self is to be 
talked of in an intelligent way it must be taken as something 
empirically given. "The whole point is expressed when we say 

1 Op. cit., note. 

2 Ibid., p. 663. 

3 Ibid. 



46 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

that no possible future activities or conditions have anything 
to do with the present action except as they enable us to take 
deeper account of the present activity, to get beyond the mere 
superficies of the act, to see it in its totality." 1 The phrase, 
1 realize yourself,' is a direction for knowledge; it means, see the 
wider consequences of your act, realize its wider bearings. 

Dewey says : "The fixed ideal is as distinctly the bane of ethical 
science today as the fixed universe of medievalism was the bane 
of the natural science of the Renascence." 2 This is a strong 
statement, which indicates how wide was the gulf which now 
separated Dewey from Green, whom he formerly acknowledged 
as his master. 

Dewey's interpretation of Green's ideal self is far from satis- 
factory, largely because of its lack of insight and appreciation. 
The reduction of thought to a ' form of activity ' renders a purely 
theoretical inquiry impossible. The 'present activity,' the 
biological situation, becomes the measure of all things, even of 
thought. Ideals, in his own words, have nothing to do with 
present action, "except as they enable us to take deeper account 
of the present activity." Dewey's self and Green's are incom- 
mensurable. The former is the biological organism, with a 
capacity for indirect activity called thinking; the latter is a not- 
natural being, whose reality escapes the logic of descriptive 
science, because of the fulness of its content. Dewey's failure 
to understand this difference is significant. His acquaintance 
with Green seems to have been formal from the beginning, never 
intimate, and the articles just reviewed mark the end of Dewey's 
idealistic discipleship. His psychological idealism, in fact, was 
fundamentally antithetical to the Neo-Hegelianism which he had 
sought to espouse, and the development of his own standpoint 
brought out the vital differences which had been hidden from 
his earlier understanding. The idealism which seeks to view 
reality together and as a whole is forever incompatible with a 
method which seeks to interpret the whole in terms of one of its 
parts. 

1 Op. cit. t p. 659. 

2 Ibid., p. 664. 



CHAPTER IV 

FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 

It now becomes necessary to review that period of Dewey's 
philosophical career which is marked by the definite abandonment 
of the idealistic standpoint, and the adoption of the method of 
instrumental pragmatism. It has already been seen that there 
is a close connection between the " f unctionalism " which now 
begins to appear, and the "Psychological Standpoint" set forth 
in the preceding pages of this review. It is not possible, however, 
to account for all the elements which contribute to this develop- 
ment. Dewey was active in many fields and received suggestions 
from many sources. It seems best, in dealing with this period, 
to "follow the lead of the subject-matter" and avoid a priori 
speculation on the factors which determined the precise form of 
Dewey's mature standpoint in philosophy. 

Dewey had always kept in mind the idea that the synthetic 
activity whereby self-consciousness evolves the ideality of the 
world must operate through the human organism. He had fre- 
quently referred to Green's saying that the Eternal Self-Con- 
sciousness reproduces itself in man, and to similar notions in 
Caird and Kant; but he had never considered, in a detailed way, 
how the organism might serve as the vehicle for such a process. 
His ethical theory, with its analysis of individuality into capacity 
and environment, tended to bring the body-world relationship 
into the foreground, and the idea that theory is relative to action 
tended to emphasize still more the relation of thought to the 
bodily processes. Dewey finally discovers the basis upon which 
the synthetic activity of the self, the thought process, may be 
described empirically and concretely. Organism-in-relation-to- 
environment becomes the key-stone of his theory of knowledge. 
Thought is interpreted as a function of the organism, biologically 
considered, and the biological psychology which results from this 
mode of interpretation is commonly known as 'functional psy- 
chology.' 

47 



4§ JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

The functional psychology is presented in a series of articles 
in the Philosophical Review and the Psychological Review, pub- 
lished between 1894 and 1898. The most important of these is 
"The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology," published in the 
Psychological Review in 1896. 1 Since it is the only article in the 
series which gives a complete view of the theory, it will be made 
the basis for the discussion of the functional theory of psychology. 

The reflex arc concept in psychology, Dewey says, recognizes 
that the sensory-motor arc is to be taken as the unit of nerve 
structure, and the type of nerve function. But psychologists 
do not avail themselves of the full value of this conception, 
because they still retain in connection with it certain distinctions 
which were used in the older psychology. "The older dualism 
between sensation and idea is repeated in the current dualism of 
peripheral and central structures and functions ; the older dualism 
of body and soul finds a distinct echo in the current dualism of 
stimulus and response." 2 These rigid distinctions must be set 
aside, and the separated elements must be viewed as elements in 
one sensory-motor coordination. Each is to be defined, not as 
something existing by itself, but as an element functioning in a 
concrete whole of activity. Thus, if we are to study vision, we 
must first take vision as a sensory-motor coordination, the act 
of seeing, and within the whole we may then be able to distinguish 
certain elements, sensations, or movements, and define them 
according to their function in the total act of seeing. The reflex 
arc idea, as commonly employed, takes sensation as stimulus, 
and movement as response, as if they were actually separate 
existences, apart from a coordination. Response is said to follow 
sensation, but it is forgotten that the sensation which preceded 
was correlated with a response, and that the response which 
follows is also correlated with sensation. Sound, for instance, 
is not a mere sensation in itself, apart from sensory-motor coordi- 
nation. Hearing is an act, and while sound may, for purposes of 
study, be abstracted from the total, it is not, in itself, independent 
of the total act of hearing. 

1 Vol. Ill, pp. 357-370. 

2 Ibid., p. 357- 



FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 49 

"But, in spite of all this, it will be urged, there is a distinction 
between stimulus and response, between sensation and motion. 
Precisely; but we ought now to be in a condition to ask of what 
nature is the distinction, instead of taking it for granted as a 
distinction somehow lying in the existence of the facts them- 
selves." 1 The distinction which is to be made between them must 
be made on a teleological basis. "The fact is that stimulus and 
response are not distinctions of existence, but teleological dis- 
tinctions, that is, distinctions of function, or part played, with 
reference to reaching or maintaining an end." 2 There are two 
kinds of teleological distinction that can be made between stim- 
ulus and response, or rather, the teleological interpretation has 
two phases. 

In the first place, it may be assumed that all of man's activity 
furthers some general end, as, for instance, the maintenance of 
life. Then man's activity may be viewed as a sequence of acts, 
which tend to further this end, and on this basis we may separate 
out stimulus and response. "It is only when we regard the 
sequence of acts as if they were adapted to reach some end that 
it occurs to us to speak of one as stimulus and the other as re- 
sponse. Otherwise, we look at them as a mere series." 3 In 
these cases the stimulus is as truly an act as the response, and 
what we have is a series of sensory-motor coordinations. Look- 
ing, for instance, is a sensory-motor coordination which is the 
stimulus or antecedent of another coordinated act, running away. 
The first coordination passes into the second, and the second may 
be viewed as a modification or reconstitution of the first. 

But this external teleological distinction between sensation 
and response is not so important as the distinction now to be 
made. So far only fixed coordinations, habitual modes of action, 
have been considered. But there are situations in which habitual 
responses and fixed modes of action fail : situations in which new 
habits are formed. In these situations there arises a special 
distinction between stimulus and response, for in these formative 
situations the stimuli and responses are consciously present in 

1 Op. cit., p. 365. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., p. 366, note. 



50 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

experience as such. "The circle is a coordination, some of whose 
members have come into conflict with each other. It is the 
temporary disintegration and need of reconstitution which occa- 
sions, which affords the genesis of, the conscious distinction into 
sensory stimulus on one side and motor response on the other." 1 
The distinction which arises between stimulus and response is a 
distinction of function within the problematical situation. 
Suppose that a sound is heard, the character of which is uncer- 
tain, and which, as a coordination, does not readily pass into its 
following coordination, or habitual response. The sound is 
puzzling, and moves into the center of attention. It is fixed 
upon, abstracted, studied on its own account. In that event, 
the sound may be spoken of as a sensation. As a sensation, it is 
the datum of a reflective process of thought, or conscious in- 
ference, whose aim is to constitute the sound a stimulus, or, in 
other words, to find what response belongs to it. When this 
response is determined the problem is done with and sensory- 
motor unity is achieved. 

The stimulus, in these cases, is simply "that phase of activity 
requiring to be defined in order that a coordination may be com- 
pleted." 2 It is not any particular existence, and is not to be 
taken as an element apart from others, having an independent 
existence. But the conscious process of attending to the sensa- 
tion and finding a response to it arises only when coordination is 
disturbed by conflicting factors, and the separation of stimulus 
from response arises only as a means for bringing unity into the 
coordination. The sensation, then, is that element which is to 
be attended to; upon which further response depends. This 
phase of the teleological interpretation defines each element by 
the part which it plays in the reflective process. 

If this brief summary of the article is difficult to comprehend, a 
reading of the original text will do little towards making it more 
intelligible. The doctrine presented there, however, is simple 
and coherent enough when its bearings and purpose are once 
understood, and, at the risk of being over-elaborate, it seems 

1 Op. cit., p. 370. 

2 Ibid., p. 368. 



FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 5* 

advisable to attempt some remarks on the general bearing and 
applications of the theory. 

It must be remembered that Dewey is seeking an interpre- 
tation of the thought process which shall reveal it as an actual 
fact of experience. A thought which is apart from experience 
and not in it, which is shut up to the contemplation of its own 
mental states is, by its definition, non-experienced. It is, like 
Kant's 'productive imagination/ formative of experience, but 
not a part of it. Dewey holds to the belief that experience must 
be explained in terms of itself ; he would do away with all trans- 
cendental factors in the explanation of reality. But modern 
psychological theory, Dewey believes, tends to shut thought in 
to the contemplation of its own subjective states, and thus gives 
it an extra-experiential status. A stimulus is said to strike upon 
an end organ, which sends an impulse to the cortex and there 
gives rise to a sensation which, as the effect of a stimulus, is 
representative of the real, but not real in itself. Thought, again, 
interprets the sensation, and sends out a motor impulse appro- 
priate to the situation. These mental states and the thought 
which interprets them are, in Dewey's mind, wholly fictitious. 
The problem, then, is to give an account of the perceptual pro- 
cesses which shall eliminate the artificial states of mind and 
present mental operations as natural processes. 

The difficulty with customary psychological explanation is 
that it breaks the reflex arc of the nervous system into three 
parts whose relations are successive and causal rather than 
simultaneous and organic. There is not first a stimulus, then 
perception, then response; these processes are supplementary, 
not separate. Or, from another point of view, psychological 
explanation must begin with a whole process which, when ana- 
lyzed, is seen to contain the three moments or phases: stimulus, 
sensation, and response. The whole process is primary and 
actual, the abstracted phases are secondary and derivative. 

With the disappearance of the mechanical interpretation of 
the perceptual process, mental states vanish. Representative 
perceptionism is thus done away with, together with all the 
problems which it generates. 



52 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

The position of conscious, or reflective thought, in Dewey's 
scheme, is especially interesting. This mode of thought is not 
constantly operative, but arises only in situations of stress and 
strain, when habitual modes of response break down. A dualism 
is established between reflective thought and the habitual life 
processes. Dewey does not take the ground that these processes 
are supplementary, as he had done in the case of stimulus, 
sensation, and response. It will be remembered that Dewey 
had defined judgment, in his logical and ethical writings of an 
earlier period, as a special activity operating in critical situations. 
This conception of judgment is now carried over into his psy- 
chology, and given a biological basis. It is worth noting that 
this view of judgment was worked out in logical terms before it 
was reinforced by biological data. Nevertheless, it is through 
biology that Dewey is able to give his interpretation of the 
thought process that empirical concreteness which he demanded 
from the beginning, but achieved very slowly. 

The value of the functional psychology, considered merely as 
psychology, is undeniable. It is, in fact, a natural and almost 
inevitable step in the development of psychological theory. 
Dewey's achievement consists in the establishment of an organic 
mode of interpretation in psychology, intended to displace the 
mechanical interpretation. The mechanical causal series is 
displaced by an organic system of internally related parts. 
Dewey, however, does not display any interest in the logical 
aspects of his doctrine. He takes the biological situation liter- 
ally, as a fact empirically given, and to be accepted without criti- 
cism. 

A discussion of the period now under consideration would not 
be complete without reference to certain articles which supple- 
ment the essay discussed above. The first of these is an article on 
"The Psychology of Effort," published in the Philosophical 
Review in 1897. 1 

It is not proposed to follow the argument of this article in 
detail, but to center attention upon those parts of it, especially 
the concluding pages, which have a special interest in connection 

1 Vol. VI, pp. 43-56. 



FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 53 

with the subject under discussion. Dewey returns, in this 
article, to the situation of effort at adjustment; to the situation 
in which an effort is made to determine the proper response to a 
stimulus. The opening pages are devoted, in the first place, to 
a discussion of the distinction between conscious effort and the 
mere expenditure of energy or effort as it appears to an outsider, 
and, in the second place, to maintaining, by means of examples, 
the proposition that the sense of effort is sensationally mediated. 
"How then does, say, a case of perception with effort differ from 
a case of 'easy' or effortless perception? The difference, I 
repeat, shall be wholly in sensory quale; but in what sensory 
quale?" 1 

The conscious sense of effort arises, Dewey answers, when there 
is a rivalry or conflict between two sensational elements in ex- 
perience. "In the case of felt effort, certain sensory quales, 
usually fused, fall apart in consciousness, and there is an alter- 
nation, an oscillation, between them, accompanied by a disa- 
greeable tone when they are apart, and an agreeable tone when 
they become fused again." 2 These two sets of sensory elements 
have each a significance in terms of adjustment; one of them is a 
correlate of a habit, or fixed mode of response, and the other is 
an intruder which resists absorption into, or fusion with, the 
dominant images of the current habit or purpose. The same 
idea of a natural tendency to persist in a habitual mode of re- 
garding things was met with in the last two chapters, and is 
qualified here by the addition of the idea that each sensory 
element represents a typical mode of response on the part of the 
organism. Dewey illustrates his notion by the case of learning 
to ride a bicycle. "Before one mounts one has perhaps a pretty 
definite visual image of himself in balance and in motion. This 
image persists as a desirability. On the other hand, there comes 
into play at once the consciousness of the familiar motor adjust- 
ments, — for the most part, related to walking. The two sets of 
sensations refuse to coincide, and the result is an amount of 
stress and strain relevant to the most serious problems of the 

1 Op. cit., p. 46. 

2 Ibid., p. 48. 



54 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

universe." 1 In another passage, which brings out even more 
clearly the rivalry of the two sets of sensations, he says: "It 
means that the activity already going on (and, therefore, re- 
porting itself sensationally) resists displacement, or transforma- 
tion, by or into another activity which is beginning, and thus 
making its sensational report." 2 

The sense of effort, then, reduces itself to an awareness of 
conflict between two sensational elements and their motor cor- 
relates. "Practically stated, this means that effort is nothing 
more, and also nothing less, than tension between means and 
ends in action, and that the sense of effort is the awareness of 
this conflict." 3 

The important aspect of Dewey's argument, for the present 
discussion, is that awareness reduces to these sensational ele- 
ments and their attributes. Throughout the article Dewey is 
opposing his sensational view of the sense of effort to what he 
calls the ' spiritual ' or non-sensational view, which supposes that 
the sense of effort is something purely psychical, which accom- 
panies the expenditure of physical energy. The consciousness of 
effort, Dewey says, is not something added to the effort, but is 
itself a certain condition existing in the sensory quales. 

This provision would make it necessary to identify conscious- 
ness, and, therefore, conscious inference, with the tensional 
situation which has been described. This being granted, all 
that pertains to conscious inference, all the methods and cate- 
gories of science, would be applicable only in such situations of 
stress and strain; they would appear simply as instruments for 
effecting a readjustment; they would be employed exclusively 
in the interests of action. This is the direction in which Dewey 
is tending. No criticism of this treatment of judgment need be 
made at this time, beyond pointing out that it presents itself, at 
first sight, as an awkward and indirect mode of describing the 
relations between organic activity and intelligence, and between 
psychology and logic. 

Nothing has so far been said of the historical sources of Dewey's 

1 Op. cit., p. 50. 

2 Ibid., p. 52. 

3 Ibid., p. 51. 



FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 55 

theory, and these may be briefly considered. There are at least 
two sources which must be taken into account: the James- 
Lange theory of the emotions, and the Neo-Hegelian ethical 
theory. The latter has already been considered to some extent, 
as it manifests itself in Dewey's own ethical theory, but its 
relation to his psychology has not been indicated. In his text- 
book, the Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics (1891), Dewey 
advanced certain ideas for which he claimed originality, at least 
in treatment. Among these was the analysis of individuality 
into function including capacity and environment. 1 

Bradley appears to have been the first among English philoso- 
phers to introduce that synthesis of the internal and external, 
of the intuitional and utilitarian modes of judging conduct, which 
became characteristic of Neo-Hegelian ethics. The synthesis, 
of course, is Hegelian in temper, and the Ethical Studies are much 
more suggestive, in general method, of the Philosophic des Rechts 
than of any previous English work. Utilitarianism tended to 
judge the moral act by its external, de facto results; intuitionism, 
on the contrary, attributed morality to the will of the agent. 
The former found morality to consist in a certain state of affairs, 
the latter in a certain internal attitude. According to the syn- 
thetic point of view, these opposed ethical systems are one-sided 
representations of the moral situation, each being true in its 
own way. To state the matter in another form, the moral act 
has a content as well as a purpose. "Let us explain," says 
Bradley. "The moral world, as we said, is a whole, and has 
two sides. There is an outer side, systems and institutions, 
from the family to the nation; this we may call the body of the 
moral world. And there must also be a soul, or else the body goes 
to pieces ; every one knows that institutions without the spirit of 
them are dead. . . . We must never let this out of our sight, that, 
where the moral world exists, you have and you must have these 
two sides." 2 Dewey expresses the same idea in a more detailed 
fashion. "What do we mean by individuality? We may dis- 
tinguish two factors — or better two aspects, two sides — in indi- 

1 Op. eit., p. viii. 

2 Ethical Studies, p. 160 f. 



56 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

viduality. On one side it means special disposition, tempera- 
ment, gifts, bent, or inclination ; on the other side it means special 
station, situation, limitations, surroundings, opportunities, etc. 
Or, let us say, it means specific capacity and specific environment. 
Each of these elements apart from the other, is a bare abstraction, 
and without reality. Nor is it strictly correct to say that individ- 
uality is contributed by these two factors together. It is, rather, 
as intimated above, that each is individuality looked at from a 
certain point of view, from within and from without." 1 It is a 
fact, empirically demonstrable, according to Dewey, that body 
and object, intention and foreseen consequence, interest and 
environment, attitude and objectivity, are parts of one another 
and of the whole moral situation. Each is relative to the other. 
"It is not, then, the environment as physical of which we are 
speaking, but as it appears to consciousness, as it is affected by 
the make-up of the agent. This is the practical or moral en- 
vironment." 2 When this relation of the inner to the outer is 
taken literally and universally, we have the essence of the 
functional psychology. Organism-in-relation-to-environment be- 
comes the catch-word of instrumental pragmatism. 

The other source of Dewey's psychology, which is now to be 
considered, is the James-Lange theory of the emotions. The 
connection here is more obvious, but perhaps not so vital, as in 
the case of the ethical theory. From the numerous references 
which Dewey made to James's Principles of Psychology (1890), 
it is evident that he was much impressed with this work. The 
theory of emotion there presented seems to have had a special 
interest for him; so much so that he made it the subject of two 
articles in the Psychological Review, in 1894 and 1895, under the 
general title, "The Theory of Emotion." 3 These studies bear a 
very close relation to the article on "The Reflex Arc Concept in 
Psychology" (1896), the standpoint being essentially the same, 
although developed in reference to a technical problem. Some 
indications may be given here of the relationships which they 

1 Outlines of Ethics, p. 97. 

2 Ibid., p. 99. 

3 Vol. I, pp. 553-569; Vol. II, pp. 13-32. 



FUNCTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 57 

bear to the James-Lange theory on the one side, and functional 
psychology on the other. The James-Lange theory is itself 
concerned with order and connection between emotional states, 
perceptions, and responses. James says: "Our natural way of 
thinking about these coarser emotions is that the mental per- 
ception of some fact excites the mental affection called the emo- 
tion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily 
expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily 
changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that 
our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion." 1 It 
is all a question, James says, of the order and sequence of these 
elements, and his contention is that the bodily changes should 
be interposed between the two mental states. This is the ques- 
tion with which Dewey's functional psychology is also concerned, 
the relation of response to stimulus, and the manner in which a 
stimulus is determined by a reaction 'into it.' Dewey's theory 
rises so naturally out of James's theory of the emotions as to 
seem but little more than its universal application. 

This connection is revealed in several passages in Dewey's 
study of the emotions. It is said, for instance, that the emotional 
situation must be taken as a whole, as a state, for instance, of 
'being angry.' The several constituents of the state of anger, 
idea or object, affect or emotion, and mode of expression or 
behavior, are not to be taken separately, but all together as 
elements in one whole. 2 Another characteristic doctrine appears 
in the affirmation that the emotional attitude is to be distin- 
guished from other attitudes by certain special features which it 
possesses. Particularly, it involves a special relation of stimulus 
to response. 3 Again, there is a tendency to translate meaning 
in terms of projected activity. "The consciousness of our mode 
of behavior as affording data for other possible actions constitutes 
the bear an objective or ideal content." 4 

It is enough, perhaps, to reveal these two sources as probable 
factors in the development of Dewey's psychological method. 

1 Principles of Psychology, Vol. II, p. 449. 
*Psy. Rev., Vol. II, p. 15 f. 

3 Ibid., p. 24 f. 

4 Ibid., p. 24. 



58 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

No speculation upon them is necessary. At most, they were 
merely contributory to Dewey's thought, and by fitting in with 
his previous ideas enabled him to give a more concrete presen- 
tation of his psychological theory than would otherwise have 
been possible. 






CHAPTER V 

THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT 

Dewey's psychology is linked up with his logical theory, as 
has already been suggested, through the interpretation of the 
thought-process as a mode of adjustment involving inference. 
This conception of thought implies, of course, that thought is an 
instrument of adaptation, and this in turn suggests that the organ 
of reflection is a product of evolutionary forces operating on the 
individual and on the race. In the period now to be reviewed 
Dewey, for the first time in his career, displays an active and 
intense interest in evolutionary theory, especially as applied in 
the fields of ethics and psychology. 

An article published in the Monist, in 1898, on "Evolution 
and Ethics," 1 deserves special attention. The central thought 
of the article is to be found in the following passage: "The belief 
that natural selection has ceased to operate [in the human sphere] 
rests upon the assumption that there is only one form of such 
selection: that where improvement is indirectly effected by the 
failure of species of a certain type to continue to reproduce; 
carrying with it as its correlative that certain variations con- 
tinue to multiply, and finally come to possess the land. This 
ordeal by death is an extremely important phase of natural 
selection, so called. . . . However, to identify this procedure 
absolutely with selection, seems to me to indicate a somewhat 
gross and narrow vision. Not only is one form of life as a whole 
selected at the expense of other forms, but one mode of action in the 
same individual is constantly selected at the expense of others. There 
is not only the trial by death, but there is the trial by the success 
or failure of special acts — the counterpart, I suppose, of physio- 
logical selection so called." 2 We have here a refinement upon 
the doctrine of natural selection. The keynote of Dewey's new 

1 Vol. VIII, pp. 321-341. The article is a criticism of Huxley's essay with the 
same title. 

2 Ibid., p. 337. Italics mine. 

59 



60 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

psychology is a process of selection constantly occurring within 
the individual organism. He points out that, in dealing with 
man, we have a highly adaptable, not merely a highly adapted 
animal. "It is certainly implied in the idea of natural selection 
that the most effective modes of variation should themselves be 
finally selected." 1 The capacity to vary, or adapt, is highly 
developed in man. Through these variations, the organism is 
able to react against the environment, changing its character 
quite completely. The environment of the modern human is 
tremendously complicated by his reaction upon it. "The 
growth of science, its application in invention to industrial 
life, the multiplication and acceleration of means of transpor- 
tation and intercommunication, have created a peculiarly un- 
stable environment." 2 Under these conditions, the ability of 
the individual to adapt himself to changing circumstances is 
largely determined by his degree of flexibility in the selection of 
right acts and responses. "In the present environment, flexi- 
bility of function, the enlargement of the range of uses to which 
one and the same organ, grossly considered, may be put, is a 
great, almost the supreme, condition of success." 3 The human 
mind is to be interpreted as a highly developed organ whose 
special function is to make adaptation more flexible and response 
more varied and discriminating. "That which was 'tendency 
to vary ' in the animal is conscious foresight in man. That which 
was unconscious adaptation and survival in the animal, taking 
place by the ' cut and try ' method until it worked itself out, is 
with man conscious deliberation and experimentation." 4 

This view of consciousness is worked out on the basis of an 
evolutionary metaphysics. Man is viewed as an organism, 
placed amid the changing whirl of things, stimulated into action 
by his needs and wants, adapting himself to conditions, making 
the situation over, or meeting it habitually where he can and 
suffering the consequences where he cannot make the necessary 

1 Op. cit., p. 338. 

2 Ibid., p. 340. 

3 Ibid. 

4 Ibid. It should be observed that this conclusion is reached on a purely theo- 
retical basis. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT. 6 1 

adjustment. If this be taken, as would seem, for the ultimate 
truth about reality and man's place in it, it must be called a 
metaphysics. Against this background Dewey's logical theory 
is developed. The most important result, from the standpoint 
of the student of mind and spirit, is the reduction of self-con- 
scious reflection to the position of a nervous function of the 
organism. The purely theoretical evidence by which this 
position is sustained should be subjected to closer scrutiny than 
can be undertaken in this limited space. 

The purpose of reflection, then, is to enable man to adapt 
himself to his environment, understanding by the environment 
the whole of the reality which surrounds him. The test of the 
mind and its newly projected modes of response [ideas] lies 
in its ability to meet the demands of the situation. The capaci- 
ties and limits of mind are determined by the purpose for which 
it was evolved ; it can enable a man to deal more effectively with 
his environment; it can do nothing else. It cannot speculate on 
the nature of reality as such, nor voyage on long journeys in 
search of truth. Its business is practical, here and now. Its 
problems are always set for it by circumstances, and these cir- 
cumstances are concrete and specific. There is no such thing as 
adaptation at large or in general. 

The business of mind is to have, and to continually reconstruct, 
useful habits. So Dewey assures the American Psychological 
Association in 1899, in an address on "Psychology and Social 
Practice." 1 We must recognize, he says, "that the existing order 
is determined neither by fate nor by chance, but is based on law 
and order, on a system of existing stimuli and modes of reaction, 
through knowledge of which we can modify the practical out- 
come." 2 Psychology uninterpreted, he says, will never provide 
ready-made materials and prescriptions for the ethical life. 
"But science, both physical and psychological, makes known the 
conditions upon which certain results depend, and therefore puts 
at the disposal of life a certain method of controlling them." 3 
These statements show the extent to which Dewey's view of 

1 Printed in the Psychological Review, Vol. VII, 1900, pp. 105-124. 

2 Ibid., p. 123. 

3 Ibid., p. 124. 



62 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

knowledge has come to be controlled by biological conceptions. 

The evolutionary method is investigated in considerable 
detail in the next article to be considered, which was published 
in two parts in the Philosophical Review, 1902, under the title, 
"The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality." 1 

The fact that some philosophers deny the importance of the 
evolutionary method for ethics, holding that morality is purely a 
matter of value, and that the evolutionary method tends only to 
obscure differences of value, makes it necessary to inquire into 
the import and nature of this method. "Anyway," Dewey says, 
"before we either abuse or recommend genetic method we ought 
to have some answers to these questions: Just what is it? Just 
what is to come of it and how ? " 2 

The experimental method in science has at least some of the 
traits of a genetic method. The nature of water, for instance, 
cannot be determined by simply observing it. But experiment 
brings to light the exact conditions under which it came into 
being and therefore explains it. "Through generating water we 
single out the precise and sole conditions which have to be fulfilled 
that water may present itself as an experienced fact. If this 
case be typical, then the experimental method is entitled to 
rank as genetic method; it is concerned with the manner or 
process by which anything comes into experienced existence." 3 

Some would deny this, on the ground that a genuinely his- 
torical event occupies a particular place in a historical series, 
from which it is inseparable, while in experimental science the 
sets or pairs of terms are not limited to any particular place in a 
historical series, but occur and recur. "Water is made over and 
over again, and, so to speak, at any date in the cosmic series. 
This deprives any account of it of genuinely historic quality." 4 
Again, it might be said in opposition to treating the experimental 
method as a genetic method, that it is interested in individual cases 
not as such, but as samples or instances. The particular case 
is only an illustration of the general relation which is being sought. 

1 Vol. XI, pp. 107-124; 353-371. 

2 Ibid., p. 108. 

3 Ibid., p. 109. 

4 Ibid. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT. 63 

It will turn out in the course of the discussion, Dewey says, 
that, although science deals with origins, it is not, in strictness, a 
historical discipline. The distinction between the historical 
and other sciences is based on an abstraction, which has been 
introduced for the sake of more adequate control. It is only by 
abstraction that we get the pairs of facts that may show up at 
any time, and by abstraction we attribute to them a generalized 
character. The facts, in themselves, are historic. 

There is no such thing as water in general, but water is just 
this water, at this time, in this place, and it never shows itself 
twice, never recurs. The scientist must deal, therefore, with 
particular historic cases of water, and with their specific origins. 
"Experiment has to do with the conditions of production of a 
specific amount of water, at a specific time and place, under 
specific circumstances: in a word, it must deal with just this 
water. The conditions which define its origin must be stated 
with equal definiteness and circumstantiality." 1 The instance 
has as definite a place in an historical series as has Julius Caesar. 
But the difference in treatment of the water and Caesar is due to 
the difference in interest. "Julius Caesar served a purpose 
which no other individual, at any other time, could have served. 
There is a peculiar flavor of human meaning and accomplishment 
about him which has no substitute or equivalent. Not so with 
water. While each portion is absolutely unique in its occur- 
rence, yet one lot will serve our intellectual or practical needs 
just as well as any other." 2 For this reason the specific case 
of water is not dealt with on its own account, but only as giving 
insight into the processes of its generation in general. In this 
way the difference arises between the generalized statements of 
physical science and the individualized form demanded in his- 
torical science. The abstract character of the physical result is 
recognized by the hypothetical form of judgment in modern 
logic; if certain conditions, then certain consequences. But the 
counterpart of this must not be forgotten, that every categorical 
proposition applies to an individual. Experimental propositions, 

1 Op. cit., p. no. 

2 Ibid., p. in. 



64 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

therefore, have an historical value. "They take their rise in, 
and they find their application to, a world of unique and changing 
things: an evolutionary universe." 1 The recognition of the 
historical character of experimental science does not in any way 
derogate from its value, but, properly understood, gives a deeper 
insight into its significance. It should be observed that here 
also Dewey treats thought, hypothesis, as coming 'after some- 
thing, and for the sake of something.' 

This attempt to justify the historical method by showing 
that it is implied in physical experiment is of dubious value. 
Its net result would seem to be the conclusion that every fact 
may be dealt with either as a historical fact or as a datum for 
physical science. Even here, however, Dewey slurs over certain 
difficulties which demand close scrutiny. The treatment of 
individuality is most unsatisfactory. While each portion or 
instance of water is itself, and has its own unquestionable unique- 
ness, no case is a mere particular, but each is a true individual, 
which means that it is, as it occurs, an instance of a general 
phenomenon. While the scientist must deal with specific cases 
of water, he has no regard for their particularity, but chooses 
them as instances, and is from first to last occupied with their 
typical characteristics. The historian, also, selects relevant 
and representative instances, in so far as his history is inter- 
pretative and not mere narrative. 

A merely factual account of a series of events is not science, 
and never could be. 

Dewey now turns to the ethical field, with the purpose of show- 
ing that the historical method in ethics does for this science pre- 
cisely what the experimental method does for other sciences. 
"History offers to us the only available substitute for the isola- 
tion and for the cumulative recombination of experiment. The 
early periods present us in their relative crudeness and simplicity 
with a substitute for the artificial operation of an experiment: 
following the phenomenon into the more complicated and refined 
form which it assumes later, is a substitute for the synthesis of 
the experiment." 2 Hydrogen and oxygen are the historical 

1 Op. cit., p. 112. 

2 Ibid., p. 113. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT. 65 

antecedents of water, whose synthesis the scientist observes, 
and so the more primitive forms of conduct are the elements 
which the moralist traces in their process of becoming fused into 
the present social fabric. Primitive social practices cannot 
be artificially isolated, like the physical elements, but they can 
be traced to their historical origins, and their interweaving to- 
wards present complex conditions can be observed. 

The historical method is subject to two misunderstandings, 
Dewey says, one by the empiricists and materialists, the other 
by the idealists. The former, having isolated the primitive facts, 
suppose them to have a superior logical and existential value. 
"The earlier is regarded as somehow more 'real' than the later, 
or as furnishing the quality in terms of which the reality of all 
the later must be stated." 1 The later is looked upon as simply a 
recombination of the earlier existences. "Writers who ought to 
know better tell us that if we only had an adequate knowledge 
of the 'primitive' state of the world, if we only had some general 
formula by which to circumscribe it, we could deduce down to 
its last detail the entire existing constitution of the world, life, 
and society." 2 The primitive elements, however, take on new 
qualities on entering into new combinations. Water is more 
than hydrogen and oxygen. There is a similar process inter- 
vening between the earlier and the later in the moral field, of 
which the primitive state and the present are merely end terms. 
Actual study must take account of the whole process. 

The idealistic fallacy is of the opposite nature. It takes the 
final term of the process to be exclusively real. "The later 
reality is, therefore, to him the persistent reality in contrast 
with which the first forms are, if not illusions, at least poor ex- 
cuses for being. . . . It is enough for present purposes to note 
that we have here simply a particular case of the general fallacy 
just discussed — the emphasis of a particular term of the series 
at the expense of the process operative in reference to all terms." 3 
The true reality is the whole process, which is represented in 
empiricism only by the primitive terms, and in idealism only by 

1 Op. cit., p. 114. 

2 Ibid., p. 116. 

3 Ibid., p. 118. 



66 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

the end terms. Only a historical method can deal with it in its 
entirety. 

In summing up the advantages of the historical method, 
Dewey says that it gives a complete account of the origin and 
development of ethical ideas, opinions, beliefs, and practices. 
"It is concerned with the origin and development of these cus- 
toms and ideas ; and with the question of their mode of operation 
after they have arisen. The described facts — yes; but among 
the facts described is precisely certain conditions under which 
various norms, ideals, and rules of action have originated and 
functioned." 1 Dewey finds it irritating that the facts thus singled 
out should be treated as mere facts, apart from their significance. 
The historical method employs description, to be sure, but it 
also aims at interpretation. "The historic method is a method, 
first, for determining how specific moral values (whether in the 
way of customs, expectations, conceived ends, or rules) came to 
be; and second, for determining their significance as indicated 
in their career." 2 

It is true, as Dewey holds, that the historical method may 
furnish a basis for interpretation, as well as description. But 
the mere scrutiny of what has happened will not reveal the ele- 
ments, nor determine their significance. The historian must 
approach his material with something more than his eyes. But 
there are many historical methods. Which shall be used in 
dealing with the development of morals? 3 Chemistry, for in- 
stance, in interpreting the fusion of hydrogen and oxygen into 
water, employs a system of atoms related to each other in a 
mathematical order, and something similarly definite must 
underlie the study of morals. The historical method, in general, 
needs no defence, but since it takes many forms, great care must 
be exercised in its application. Dewey seems to ignore these 
difficulties. 

Dewey's argument now leads him to a comparison of the 
evolutionary methods with the intuitional and empirical methods 
in ethics. In making the comparison, he does not propose to 

1 op. at., P . 355. 

2 ibid., P . 356. 

3 See Bosanquet's Logic, second edition, Chapter VII, and especially page 240. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT. 67 

raise the question of fact concerning the existence of intuitions. 
The question to be confronted is rather a logical one, concerning 
the validity of beliefs. "Under what conditions alone, and in 
what measure or degree, are we justified in arguing from the 
existence of moral intuitions as mental states and acts to facts 
taken to correspond to them?" 1 

The answer is that the existence of a belief argues nothing as 
to its validity. The intuitionist takes his belief as a brute fact, 
unrelated to objective conditions. The 'inexpugnable' char- 
acter of the belief cannot establish its validity, because the life 
of a single individual occupies but a brief span in the continuity 
of the social life in which the belief is embedded. Beliefs last 
for generations, and then very often disappear. "What guar- 
antee have we that our present 'intuitions' have more validity 
than hundreds of past ideas that have shown themselves by 
passing away to be empty opinion or indurated prejudice?" 2 
Intuitionism has no way of guaranteeing its beliefs. 

The evolutionary method, on the other hand, is able to deter- 
mine the validity of beliefs. "The worth of the intuition de- 
pends upon genetic considerations. In so far as we can state 
the intuition in terms of the conditions of its origin, development, 
and later career, in so far we have some criterion for passing judg- 
ment upon its pretensions to validity. . . . But if we cannot 
find such historic origin and functioning, the intuition remains a 
mere state of consciousness, a hallucination, an illusion, which is 
not made more worthy by simply multiplying the number of 
people who have participated in it." 3 Certain savage races, 
for instance, possessed moral intuitions which made the practice 
of infanticide an obligation. But the fact that it was universally 
held does not establish its validity. It must be condemned or 
justified by the results to which it led. 

Dewey's criticism of intuitionism scarcely does justice to that 
method, whatever may be its inherent weakness. There doubt- 
less have been thinkers who held that truth is revealed to the 
reason of man in its naked purity, in the shape of apodictic intel- 

1 Philosophical Review, Vol. XI, p. 357. 

2 Ibid., p. 360. 

3 Ibid., p. 358. 



68 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

lectual principles. But even in the case of so extreme a position 
as that of Kant, there are important qualifying considerations to 
be taken into account. There is no reason to suppose that moral 
judgment, as Kant conceived it, was excluded from the considera- 
tion of relevant data, such as the knowledge of actual effects 
produced by given courses of conduct. His position seems to 
have been, not that moral judgment lacked specific content, but 
that reason took something with it to the moral situation. 
The intuitionists may have over-estimated the original endow- 
ment of the mind, but it must be admitted with them that the 
mind which approaches the moral situation empty of concepts 
cannot make moral decisions. If man is to hold no beliefs except 
those proved valid by experience, how can there be any to 
validate? Intelligence must have the capacity to frame beliefs 
in the light of its past knowledge, and its acts of judgment, 
consequently, presuppose a test of the validity of ideas which 
belongs to intelligence as such, and not to history taken abstractly. 
Beliefs are adapted to their objects in the making, and on this 
account are usually found to have had some justification, even 
where set aside. 'A principle that is suitable for universal 
legislation already presupposes a content.' 

Dewey next considers the relation of the evolutionary methods 
to empiricism. "Empiricism," he says, "is no more historic in 
character than is intuitionalism. Empiricism is concerned with 
the moral idea or belief as a grouping or association of various 
elementary feelings. It regards the idea simply as a complex 
state which is to be explained by resolving it into its elementary 
constituents. By its logic, both the complex and the elements 
are isolated from an historic context. . . . The empirical and 
the genetic methods thus imply a very different relationship 
between the moral state, idea, or belief, and objective reality. 
. . . The empirical theory holds that the idea arises as a reflex 
of some existing object or fact. Hence the test of its objectivity is 
the faithfulness with which it reproduces that object as copy. The 
genetic theory holds that the idea arises as a response, and that 
the test of its validity is found in its later career as manifested 
with reference to the needs of the situation that evoked it." 1 

1 Op. cit., p. 364 f. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT. 69 

Only a method that takes the world as a changing, historical 
thing, can deal with the adaptation of morality to new conditions. 
"Both empiricism and intuitionalism, though in very different 
ways, deny the continuity of the moralizing process. They 
set up timeless, and hence absolute and disconnected, ultimates; 
thereby they sever the problems and movements of the present 
from the past, rob the past, the sole object of calm, impartial, 
and genuinely objective study, of all instructing power, and leave 
our experience to form undirected, at the mercy of circumstance 
and arbitrariness, whether that of dogmatism or scepticism." 1 

In evaluating the article as a whole, it must be said that 
Dewey's study is not productive of definite results. The history 
of the past can undoubtedly offer to the student a mass of data 
that is interesting and instructive. The importance of this or 
that belief, or its value, can be gauged by the results which it is 
known to have produced. But when, in this day and age, the 
moralist sets out to find the principles which shall guide his own 
conduct, the history of morals is of no more importance than the 
observations of every day life, which reveal the consequences of 
conduct in the lives of men about him. But more particu- 
larly, it should be added, an estimate of present moral action 
depends, not upon truth uttered by the past, but upon truth 
discovered and interpreted by an intelligence which surveys the 
past and makes it meaningful. The past in itself is nothing; 
thought alone can create real history. 

Another article, published by Dewey in the Philosophical 
Review in 1900, "Some Stages of Logical Thought," illustrates 
the employment of the genetic method in a more specific way. 2 
In his introductory remarks, Dewey says: "I wish to show how 
a variety of modes of thinking, easily recognizable in the progress 
of both the race and the individual, may be identified and ar- 
ranged as successive species of the relationship which doubting 
bears to assurance ; as various ratios, so to speak, which the vigor 
of doubting bears to mere acquiescence. The presumption is 
that the function of questioning is one which has continually 
grown in intensity and range, that doubt is continually chased 

1 Op. cit., p. 370. 

2 Vol. IX, pp. 465-489. 



70 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

back, and, being cornered, fights more desperately, and thus 
clears the ground more thoroughly." 1 Dewey finds four 
stages of relationship between questioning and dogmatism: 
dogmatism, discussion, proof, and empirical science; and he 
seeks to show how each stage involves a higher degree of free 
inquiry. " Modern scientific procedure, as just set forth, seems 
to define the ideal or limit of this process. It is inquiry emanci- 
pated, universalized, whose sole aim and criterion is discovery, 
and hence it makes the terminus of our description. It is idle 
to conceal from ourselves, however, that this scientific procedure, 
as a practical undertaking, has not as yet reflected itself into 
any coherent and generally accepted theory of thinking. . . . " 2 

It is not necessary to comment on Dewey's stages of thought. 
The similarity of this division to Comte's theological, metaphy- 
sical and scientific stages of explanation will be apparent. 
Dewey's remarks on the logic of the scientific stage, however, 
are interesting. "The simple fact of the case is," he says, 
"that there are at least three rival theories on the ground, each 
claiming to furnish the sole proper interpretation of the actual 
procedure of thought." 3 There is the Aristotelian logic, with 
its fixed forms; the empirical logic, which holds "that only 
particular facts are self-supporting, and that the authority al- 
lowed to general principles is derivative and second hand;" 4 
and finally there is the transcendental logic, which claims, "by 
analysis of science and experience, to justify the conclusion that 
the universe itself is a construction of thought, giving evidence 
throughout of the pervasive and constitutive action of reason; 
and holds, consequently, that our logical processes are simply 
the reading off or coming to consciousness of the inherently 
rational structure already possessed by the universe in virtue of 
the presence within it of this pervasive and constitutive action 
of thought." 5 

None of these logics, Dewey finds, is capable of dealing with 

1 Op. cit., p. 465. 

2 Ibid., p. 486 f. 

3 Ibid., p. 487. 
* Ibid. 
Ubd. 



THE EVOLUTIONARY STANDPOINT. 7* 

the actual procedure of science, because none of them treats 
thought as a doubt-inquiry process, but rather as something 
fixed and limited by conditions which determine its operations 
in advance. Dewey asks: "Does not an account or theory of 
thinking, basing itself on modern scientific procedure, demand a 
statement in which all the distinctions and terms of thought — 
judgment, concept, inference, subject, predicate and copula of 
judgment, etc. ad indefinitum — shall be interpreted simply and 
entirely as distinctive functions or divisions of labor within the 
doubt-inquiry process?" 1 

Seven years before, Dewey had been an ardent champion 
of the transcendental logic, on the ground that it was progressive, 
and he contrasted it most favorably with the formal logics which 
treat thought as a self-contained process. Now, however, he 
has a new insight. Logic must be reinterpreted in the light of 
the evolutionary or biological method. We shall see how this 
is accomplished in the next chapter. 

To the student of the history of philosophy, Dewey's treatment 
of the genetic and historical methods must seem seriously inade- 
quate. The idealist, moreover, will feel that Dewey should 
have taken note, in his criticism of the idealistic standpoint, of 
the fact that Hegelianism was from first to last a historical 
method; that the German idealists gave the impulse to modern 
historical research, and provoked a study of the historical method 
whose results are still felt. But in turning away from idealism, 
Dewey has no word of appreciation for this aspect of the Hegelian 
philosophy. 

When the truth is boiled down, it appears that Dewey's 
historical method, in so far as he had one, was based on biological 
evolutionism. He had no interest in any other form of his- 
torical interpretation. 

1 Op. cit., p. 489. 



CHAPTER VI 

"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY" 

In 1903 a volume entitled Studies in Logical Theory, consisting 
of essays on logical topics by Dewey and his colleagues and pupils, 
was published under the auspices of the University of Chicago. 
In a review of this volume, Professor Pringle-Pattison remarks: 
"It is, indeed, most unusual to find a series of philosophical 
papers by different writers in which (without repetition or dup- 
lication) there is so much unity in the point of view and har- 
mony in results. That this is so is a striking evidence of the 
moulding influence of Professor Dewey upon his pupils and 
coadjutors in the Chicago School of Philosophy." 1 It would be 
a needless task to review the whole volume, and attention will 
be confined to the essays which constitute Dewey's special 
contribution to the undertaking. These constitute the first four 
chapters of the volume, and are devoted to a critical examination 
of Lotze's logic. 2 Here, for the first time, Dewey presents in 
complete form the logical theory which stands as the goal of his 
previous endeavors, and marks the beginning of his career as a 
pragmatist. 3 

The first chapter of the "Studies" is devoted to a general 
consideration of the nature of logical theory. Dewey begins his 
discussion with an account of the naive view of thought, the 
view of the man of affairs or of the scientist, who employs ideas 
and reflection but has never become critical of his mental pro- 

1 The Philosophical Radicals, "Dewey's Studies in Logical Theory," p. 179. The 
essay was originally printed as a critical notice in the Philosophical Review, Novem- 
ber, 1904. 

2 Since this was written (1915-16), Dewey's chapters have been reprinted in a 
volume entitled Essays in Experimental Logic, published by the University of 
Chicago Press (June, 1916). They are preceded, in this new setting, by a special 
introductory chapter, and numerous alterations have been made which do not, 
however, affect the fundamental standpoint. 

3 See James's review, "The Chicago School," Psychological Bulletin, Vol. I, 
1904, pp. 1-5. 

72 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY:' 73 

cesses; who has never reflected upon reflection. "If we were to 
ask," he says, "the thinking of naive life to present, with a 
minimum of theoretical elaboration, its conception of its own 
practice, we should get an answer running not unlike this : Think- 
ing is a kind of activity which we perform' at specific need, just 
as at other need we engage in other sorts of activity." 1 While the 
standpoint of the naive man is usually hard to determine, there 
appears to be considerable justification for Dewey's statement. 
The common man does tend to view thinking as a special kind 
of activity, performed by an organ which can be 'trained,' and 
he is inclined to speak of education as a process of ' training the 
mind.' 2 

Dewey finds a large measure of truth in this naive view of 
thought. Thought appears to be derivative and secondary. 
"It comes after something and out of something, and for the 
sake of something." 3 It is employed at need, and ceases to 
operate when not needed. "Taking some part of the universe 
of action, of affection, of social construction, under its special 
charge, and having busied itself therewith sufficiently to meet 
the special difficulty presented, thought releases that topic and 
enters upon further more direct experience." 4 There is a rhythm 
of practice and thought; man acts, thinks, and acts again. The 
business of thought is to solve practical difficulties, such as arise 
in connection with the conduct of life. The purpose for which 
thought intervenes is to enable action to get ahead by discovering 
a way out of the given difficulty. Ordinarily, the transition from 
thought to action and the reverse is accomplished without break 
or difficulty. 

Occasions arise, however, when thought is balked by a situation 
with which it is unable to deal, after repeated attempts. Critical 
reflection is then directed upon thought itself, and logical theory 
is the result. "The general theory of reflection, as over against 
its concrete exercise, appears when occasions for reflection are 

1 Studies in Logical Theory, p. 2. 

2 Compare Dewey, How We Think (1910), Chapter II, "The Need for Training 
Thought." 

3 Studies in Logical Theory, p. 1. 

4 Ibid., p. 2. 



74 JOHN DEWEY S LOGICAL THEORY. 

so overwhelming and so mutually conflicting that specific ade- 
quate response in thought is blocked." 1 The purpose of logical 
theory is therefore a practical one, and logical theory, like ordi- 
nary reflection, is directed toward the removal of difficulties 
which stand in the way of the achievement of practical ends. 

This description of thought and of the nature of logical theory 
invites suspicion by its very simplicity. Nobody would deny 
that thought is linked up with practice, that the processes of life 
link up into one whole organic process, and that it would be a 
mistake to treat the cognitive processes as if they were separate 
from the whole. But Dewey's account of thought seems to fall 
into the very abstractness which he is so anxious to avoid. 
Experience is represented as a series of acts, attitudes, or func- 
tions, which follow one another in succession. "Thinking fol- 
lows, we will say, striving, and doing follows thinking. Each 
in the fulfilment of its own function inevitably calls out its suc- 
cessor." 2 The functions are distinct, but are united to each 
other, end to end, like links in a chain. They pass into and out 
of one another, but are not simultaneous. This description 
gives rise, as Bosanquet observes, 3 to a kind of dualism between 
thinking and the other processes of life, which is made deeper 
because thinking is regarded as a very special activity, which 
"passes judgment upon both the processes and contents of other 
functions," and whose aim and work is "distinctively recon- 
structive or transformatory." 4 

Dewey's description of the processes of experience is undoubt- 
edly plausible, but should not be accepted without close scrutiny 
of the facts. It has been held, in opposition to such a view, that 
the cognitive processes are so bound up with perception, feeling, 
willing, and doing, that they cannot be separated from the com- 
plex. 5 Or it might be held that thinking and doing are simul- 

1 op. tit,, p. 3f. 

2 Ibid., p. 16. 

3 Logic, second ed., Vol. II, p. 270. 

4 Studies in Logical Theory, p. x. 

6 " Thinking or rationality is not limited to the process of abstract cognition, 
but it includes feeling and will, and in the course of its development carries these 
along with it. There is, of course, such a thing as what we have called abstract 
cognition; but the different moments are all united in the concrete experience which 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY." 75 

taneous and complementary processes, rather than successive 
and supplementary. Dewey does not concern himself with 
these possibilities, seeming to take it for granted that his inter- 
pretation is the 'natural' one. It must be said, however, that 
Dewey's description of thought as a process is by no means 
obvious and simple; thought is not easy to describe. 

When we turn to logical theory, Dewey says, there are two 
directions which may be taken. The general features of logical 
theory are indicated by its origin. When ordinary thinking is 
impeded, an examination of tlje thinking function is undertaken, 
with the purpose of discovering its business and its mode of 
operation. The object of the examination is practical; to enable 
thinking to be carried on more effectively. If these conditions 
are kept in mind, logical theory will be guided into its proper 
channels: it will be assumed that every process of reflection 
arises with reference to some specific situation, and has to sub- 
serve a specific purpose dependent upon the occasion which calls 
it forth. Logical theory will determine the conditions which 
arouse thought, the mode of its operation, and the testing of its 
results. Such a logic, being true to the problems set for it by 
practical needs, is in no danger of being lost in generalities. 

But there is another direction which logical theory sometimes 
takes, unmindful of the conditions imposed by its origin. This 
is the epistemological direction. Epistemological logic concerns 
itself with the relation of thought at large to reality at large. 
It assumes that thought is a self-contained activity, having no 
vital connection with the world which is to be known. Such a 
logic can never be fruitful, for it has lost sight of its purpose in 
the formulation of its problem. 

Dewey is quite right in opposing a conception of thought 
which makes it a self-contained activity, having no vital con- 
nection with other life processes. Few recent thinkers have 
been guilty of that error. Lotze, to be sure, made the mistake 
of separating thought from the reality to be known, and therefore 
serves as a ready foil for Dewey's criticism. But Lotze's age is 
past and gone. 

we may name the life of thought." Creighton, "Experience and Thought," 
Philosophical Review, Vol. XV, 1906, p. 487 f. 



76 JOHN DEWETS LOGICAL THEORY. 

When the abstract conception of thought is set aside, and it is 
agreed that thought must be treated as a process among the 
processes of experience, there is still room for divergence of 
opinion as to the exact manner in which thought is related to 
other functions. Dewey's logical theory, as outlined above, 
depends upon a very special interpretation of the place which 
thought occupies in experience. For this reason he considers 
logic to be inseparable from psychology. " Psychology ... is 
indispensable to logical evaluation, the moment we treat logical 
theory as an account of thinking as a mode of adaptation to its 
own generating conditions, and judge its validity by reference to 
its efficiency in meeting its problems." 1 Psychology, in other 
words, must substantiate Dewey's account of thought, else his 
'logic' has no foundation. But if it were held that the cognitive 
processes cannot be separated (except by abstraction for psy- 
chological purposes) from other processes, there could manifestly 
be no such logical problem as Dewey has posited. Logic would 
be freed from reliance upon psychology. In this case, logical 
inquiry would be directed to the study of concepts, forms of 
judgment, and methods of knowledge, with the purpose of de- 
termining their relations, proper applications, and spheres of 
relevance. Logic would be a 'criticism of categories' rather 
than a criticism of the function of thinking. Dewey recognizes 
that such a study of method might be useful, but holds that it 
would be subsidiary to the larger problems of logic. "The 
distinctions and classifications that have been accumulated in 
' formal ' logic are relevant data ; but they demand interpretation 
from the standpoint of use as organs of adjustment to material 
antecedents and stimuli." 2 It will be seen that the treatment 
of the forms of thought as "organs of adjustment" makes logic 
subsidiary to psychology, necessarily and completely. All 
follows, however, from the original assumption that thought is a 
special activity, clearly distinguishable from other experienced 
processes, and possessing a special function of its own. 

In his further analysis of logical theory, Dewey states that it 

1 Op. cit., p. 15. 
*Ibid., p. 8. 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY:' 77 

has two phases, one general and one specific. The general 
problem concerns the relations of the various functions of expe- 
rience to one another ; how they give rise to each other, and what 
is their order of succession. This wider logic is identified with 
philosophy in general. 1 The specific phase of logic, logic proper, 
concerns itself with the function of knowing as such, inquiring 
into its typical behavior, occasion of operation, divisions of 
labor, content, and successful employment. Dewey indicates 
the danger of identifying logic with either of these to the exclu- 
sion of the other, or of supposing that they can be finally isolated 
from one another. "It is necessary to work back and forth 
between the larger and the narrower fields." 2 

Why is it necessary to make such a distinction at all? And 
why necessary to move back and forth between the two pro- 
visional standpoints? Dewey might answer by the following 
analogy: The thought function may be studied, first of all, as a 
special organ, as an anatomist might study the structure of any 
special organ of the body; but in order to understand the part 
played by this member in the organism as a whole, it would be 
necessary to adopt a wider view, so that its place in the sys- 
tem could be determined. This is probably what Dewey means 
by his two standpoints. He says: "We keep our paths straight 
because we do not confuse the sequential, efficient, and functional 
relationship of types of experience with the contemporaneous, 
correlative, and structural distinctions of elements within a 
given function." 3 The first objection to be made to this treat- 
ment of thought is that it makes knowing the activity of a special 
organ, like liver or lungs. If this objection is surmounted, there 
remains another from the side of general method. The biologist 
not only studies the particular organs as to their structure and 
their relationships within the body, but he has a view of the body 
as a whole, of its general end and purpose. His study of the 
particular organ is in part determined by his knowledge of the 
relations between body and environment. But experience as a 
whole cannot be treated like a body, because it has no environ- 

1 Op. cit., pp. 18-19. 

2 Ibid., p. 23. 

3 Ibid., p. 17. 



78 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

ment. The analogy between body and its processes and expe- 
rience and its processes breaks down, therefore, at a vital point. 
Dewey's genetic interpretation gains in plausibility when the 
human body, and not the whole of experience, is taken as the 
ground upon which the 'functions' are to be explained, for the 
body has an environment and purposes in relation to that en- 
vironment. Experience as a whole possesses no such external 
reference. 

It will be seen that Dewey's interpretation of the function of 
knowing is not as empirical as it proposes to be. Its underlying 
conceptions are biological in character, and these conceptions 
are brought ready-made to the study of thought. Logical 
theory does not arise naturally and spontaneously from a study 
of the facts of mind, but the facts are aligned and interpreted in 
terms of categories selected in advance. Empiricism develops 
its theories in connection with facts, but rationalism (in the bad 
sense of the word) fits the facts into prepared theories. Dewey's 
treatment of thought is, after all, more rationalistic than em- 
pirical. 

To sum up Dewey's conclusions so far: Logic is the study of 
the function of knowing in relation to the other functions of 
experience. The wider logic distinguishes the function of know- 
ing from other activities, and discovers its general purpose; the 
narrower logic examines the function of knowing in itself, with 
the object of determining its structure and operation. The aim 
of logic as a whole is to understand the operations of the concrete 
activity called knowing, with the purpose of rendering it more 
efficient. This concrete treatment of thought contrasts sharply 
with the ' epistemological ' method, which sets thought over 
against the concrete processes of experience, and thus generates 
the false problem of the relation of thought in general to reality 
in general. 

Having stated his position, we might expect Dewey, in the 
course of the next three chapters, to enter upon a consideration 
of one phase or other of his logic. On the contrary, he proposes to 
take up "some of the considerations that lie on the borderland be- 
tween the larger and the narrower conceptions of logical theory." 1 

1 Op. cit., p. 23. 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY:' 79 

First, he will consider the antecedent conditions and cues of the 
thought-process; the conditions which lead up to and into the 
function of knowing. These conditions lie between the thought- 
process and the preceding function (in order of time), and are 
therefore on the borderland between the wider and narrower 
spheres of logic. 

In denning the conditions which precede and evoke thought, 
Dewey says: "There is always as antecedent to thought an 
experience of some subject-matter of the physical or social 
world, or organized intellectual world, whose parts are actively 
at war with each other — so much so that they threaten to disrupt 
the entire experience, which accordingly for its own maintenance 
requires deliberate re-definition and re-relation of its tensional 
parts." 1 Thought is always called into action by the whole con- 
crete situation in which it occurs, not by any particular sensation, 
idea, or feeling. 

The opposite interpretation of the nature of the antecedents 
of thought is furnished by Lotze, who makes them consist in 
bare impressions, 'moods of ourselves,' mere states of conscious- 
ness. Dewey is quite right in calling these bare impressions 
purely fictitious, though the observation is by no means original. 
From the manner in which he approaches the study of the "an- 
tecedents of thought" it appears, however, that Dewey has 
something in common with Lotze. The functional theory, that 
is, allows a certain initial detachment of thought from reality, 
which must be bridged over by an empirical demonstration of 
its natural connection with preceding processes. 

Dewey is wholly justified, again, in maintaining that thought 
is not a faculty set apart from reality, and that what is 'given' 
to thought is a coherent world, not a mass of unmeaning sen- 
sations. He recognizes his substantial agreement with the 
modern idealists in these matters. 2 But the idealists, he believes, 

1 Op. cit., p. 39 f. Bradley suggests a similar idea of the 'tensional situation.' 
See, for instance, Ethical Studies, p. 65, where he remarks: "We have conflicting 
desires, say A and B ; we feel two tensions, two drawings (so to speak) but we can 
not actually affirm ourselves in both." A more complete statement of the 'ten- 
sional situation ' will be found on page 239 of the same work and in various other 
passages. 

2 Ibid., pp. 43-44. 



80 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

hold a constitutive conception of thought which is in conflict 
with the empirical description of thinking as a concrete activity 
in time. Reality, according to this conception, is a vast system 
of sensations brought into a rational order by logical forms, and 
finite thought, in its operations, simply apprehends or discovers 
the infinite order of the cosmos. "How does it happen," Dewey 
asks, "that the absolute constitutive and intuitive Thought does 
such a poor and bungling job that it requires a finite discursive 
activity to patch up its products?" 1 

Against Lotze, such an indictment has considerable force, 
but its applicability to modern idealism is not so obvious. 
Modern idealism has insisted upon an empirical treatment of 
thought, and has definitely surrendered the abstract sensations 
of the older psychologies. Nor does idealism tend to treat 
finite thought as a process which merely 'copies' an eternally 
present nature. The issue between Dewey and the idealists is 
this: Does functionalism render an accurate empirical account 
of the nature of thought as a concrete process? 

In his third chapter Dewey discusses "Thought and its 
Subject-matter: The Datum of Thinking." The tensional 
situation passes into a thought situation, and reflection enters 
upon its work of restoring the equilibrium of experience. Certain 
characteristic processes attend the operation of thought. "The 
conflicting situation inevitably polarizes or dichotomizes itself. 
There is somewhat which is untouched in the contention of in- 
compatibles. There is something which remains secure, un- 
questioned. On the other hand, there are elements which are 
rendered doubtful and precarious." 2 The unquestioned element 
is the datum; the uncertain element, the ideation. Ideas are 
"impressions, suggestions, guesses, theories, estimates, etc., the 
facts are crude, raw, unorganized, brute." 3 There is an approxi- 
mation to bare meaning on the one hand, and bare existence on 
the other. 

The first dichotomy passes into a second. "Once more, and 
briefly, both datum and ideatum may . . . break up, each for 

1 Op. cit., p. 45. 

2 Ibid., p. 50. 

3 Ibid., p. 52. 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY." 8l 

itself, into physical and psychical." 1 The datum, or sense 
material, is all, somehow, matter and real, but one part of it 
turns out to have a psychical, another a physical form. Simi- 
larly, the ideatum divides into what is mere fancy, the psychical, 
and what is objectively valid, the physical. 

These distinctions are divisions of labor within the thought- 
process. "All the distinctions of the thought-function, of con- 
ception as over against sense-perception, of judgment in its 
various modes and forms, of inference in its vast diversity of 
operation — all these distinctions come within the thought situa- 
tion as growing out of a characteristic antecedent typical for- 
mation of experience. . . . " 2 Great confusion results in logical 
theory, Dewey believes, when it is forgotten that these distinc- 
tions are valid only within the thought process. Their order of 
occurrence within the thought process must also be observed, if 
confusion is to be prevented. Datum and ideatum come first, 
psychical and physical next in order. "Thus the distinction 
between subjectivity and objectivity is not one between meaning 
as such and datum as such. It is a specification that emerges, 
correspondently, in both datum and ideatum, as affairs of the 
direction of logical movement. That which is left behind in the 
evolution of accepted meaning is characterized as real, but only 
in a psychical sense; that which is moved toward is regarded as 
real in an objective, cosmic sense." 3 

Dewey does well to call attention to the limitations of these 
categories, which cannot, indeed, be treated as absolute without 
serious error. It may be questioned, however, whether their 
limitations are of the precise nature which he describes. All 
depends upon the initial conception of the nature of thought. 
From Dewey's standpoint, these categories are 'tools of analysis' 
which function only within the thinking process ; but his descrip- 
tion of the function of knowing may be questioned, in which case 
his instrumental view of the concepts is rendered meaningless. 
A logical, as distinct from a psychological, treatment of the con- 
cepts mentioned, would show that their validity is limited to a 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 47. 

3 Ibid., p. 53- 



S2 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

certain 'sphere of relevance;' that they are applicable within a 
certain context and to a particular subject-matter. The danger 
of indiscriminate use of the categories would be avoided by the 
logical criticism even better, perhaps, than by Dewey's method. 

The discussion in Dewey's fourth and last chapter, concerning 
"The Content and Object of Thought," hinges upon a detailed 
criticism of Lotze's position, which cannot be presented here. 
The general bearing of the discussion, however, may be indicated. 
"To regard," says Dewey, "the thought-forms of conception, 
judgment, and inference as qualifications of 'pure thought, apart 
from any difference in objects,' instead of as successive dispo- 
sitions in the progressive organization of the material (or objects) 
is the fallacy of rationalism." 1 

Pure thought, of course, cannot be defended. At the same 
time, Dewey, like Lotze, tends to regard thought as a special 
function with a ' content' of its own. If thought is regarded as a 
special kind of process, having its own content in the way of 
instrumental concepts, the question inevitably arises: How 
shall these forms be employed to reach truth? How apply them 
correctly to the matter in hand? 

Dewey answers that the forms and hypotheses of thought, 
like the tools and scaffoldings for its operations, are especially 
designed for the labor which they have to perform. "There is 
no miracle in the fact that tool and material are adapted to each 
other in the process of reaching a valid conclusion. . . . Each 
has been slowly evolved with reference to its fit employ in the 
entire function; and this evolution has been checked at every 
point by reference to its own correspondent." 2 

It is no doubt true that established conceptions, no less than 
temporary hypotheses, have been evolved in connection with, as 
a feature or part of, the subject-matter to which they pertain. 
But it is quite another thing to say that these evolved forms 
belong to thought, if by thought be meant the functional activity 
of Dewey's description. Dewey stresses the relevance of these 
forms to the thought-process, rather than their relevance to a 

1 Op.cit., p. 61 f. 

2 Ibid., p. 80. 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY:' 83 

particular sphere of discourse. His purpose is to show that dis- 
tinctions which are valid within the process of knowing are not 
valid elsewhere, and the net result is to limit the faculty of thought 
as a whole, as well as the forms of thought. 

This result reveals itself most clearly in his discussion of the 
test of truth. "In that sense the test of reality is beyond 
thought, as thought, just as at the other limit thought originates 
out of a situation which is not reflectional in character. Inter- 
pret this before and beyond in a historic sense, as an affair of the 
place occupied and role played by thinking as a function in 
experience in relation to other functions, and the intermediate 
and instrumental character of thought, its dependence upon 
unreflective antecedents for its existence, and upon a consequent 
experience for its test of final validity, becomes significant and 
necessary." 1 This notion that the test of thought must be 
external to thought depends directly upon the doctrine that 
thought is a special activity of the kind heretofore described. 
It results from the occasionalism attributed by Dewey to the 
thinking process. 

If the truth or falsity of an idea is not discovered by thought, 
then by what faculty might it be discovered? Perhaps by ex- 
perience as a whole or in general. Dewey, on occasion, speaks 
as follows: "Experience is continually integrating itself into a 
wholeness of coherent meaning deepened in significance by passing 
through an inner distraction in which by means of conflict certain 
contents are rendered partial and hence objectively conscious." 2 
Perhaps Dewey means to say that truth is determined by this 
cosmic automatism. It is confusing, however, to be told in one 
moment that thought transforms experience, and in another 
that experience transforms itself. 

Experience, not reflection, is, then, the test of truth and 
thought. Such a statement would not be possible, except in 
connection with a psychology which deliberately sets experience 
over against reflection, making the latter a peculiar, although 
dependent, process. Lotze, indeed, makes the separation of 
thought from experience quite complete. Dewey attempts to 

1 Op. cit., p. 85. 

2 Ibid. 



$4 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

bring them together by his psychological method, but does not 
completely succeed. In the meantime modern idealism has 
suggested that thought and experience are merely parts of one 
general process, constantly operating in conjunction. To one 
who believes that the various processes or ' functions ' of experience 
constitute a single organ of life, the proposition that experience, 
rather than reflection, is the judge of truth, becomes meaningless. 

In an essay on "The Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treat- 
ment of Morality" in another volume of the Chicago Publications 
of 1903, 1 Dewey presents a positive statement of his logical 
theory which is an excellent supplement to the critical study of 
Lotze. 

Science, Dewey remarks in introducing this essay, is a syste- 
matized body of knowledge. Knowledge may be taken either 
as a body of facts or as a process of arranging a body of facts ; as 
results or the acquiring of results. The latter phase of science 
is the more important. "As used in this article, 'scientific' 
means regular methods of controlling the formation of judgments 
regarding some subject-matter." 2 In the scientific attitude, 
beliefs are looked upon as conclusions, and as conclusions they 
look in two directions. They look backward towards the ground 
from which they are empirically derived, and which renders them 
valid, and they look forward, as meaning, to being the ground 
from which further conclusions can be deduced. "So far as we 
engage in this procedure, we look at our respective acts of judging 
not as independent and detached, but as an interrelated system, 
within which every assertion entitles us to other assertions 
(which must be carefully deduced since they constitute its mean- 
ing) and to which we are entitled only through other assertions 
(so that they must be carefully searched for). 'Scientific' as 
used in this article thus means the possibility of establishing an 
order of judgments such that each one when made is of use in 
determining other judgments, thereby securing control of their 
formation." 3 

1 Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, First Series, Vol. Ill, pp. 

1 15-139. 

2 Ibid., p. 115. 

3 Ibid., p. 116. 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY: 1 85 

This view of science as an order of judgments requires a 
special treatment of the generic ideas, the 'conclusions,' or 
universals of science. The individual judgment, 'This, A, is B,' 
expresses an identity. But it is much better expressed in hypo- 
thetical form. "Identification, in other words, is secure only 
when it can be made through (1) breaking up the analyzed. 
This of naive judgment into determinate traits, (2) breaking up 
the predicate into a similar combination of elements, and (3) 
establishing uniform connection between some of the elements in 
the subject and some in the predicate." 1 Identity exists amid 
relevant differences, and the more intimately the system of 
differents is understood, the more positive is the determination 
of identity. This will be recognized as the 'concrete universal' 
of the Hegelian logicians. 

But, Dewey says, modern logicians tend to disregard judgment 
as act, and pay attention to it only as content. The generic 
ideas are studied in independence of their applications, as if this 
were a matter of no concern in logic. " In truth, there is no such 
thing as control of one content by mere reference to another 
content as such. To recognize this impossibility is to recognize 
that the control of the formation of the judgment is always through 
the medium of an act by which the respective contents of both 
the individual judgment and of the universal proposition are 
selected and brought into relationship to each other." 2 The 
individual act of judgment is necessary to logical theory, because 
the act of the individual forms the connecting link between the 
generic idea and the specific details of the situation. There must 
be some means whereby the instrumental concept is brought to 
bear upon its appropriate material. "The logical process in- 
cludes, as an organic part of itself, the selection and reference of 
that particular one of the system which is relevant to the par- 
ticular case. This individualized selection and adaptation is an 
integral portion of the logic of the situation. And such selection 
and adjustment is clearly in the nature of an act." 3 

This problem of the relation of the categories to their subject- 

1 Op. cit., p. 120. 

2 Ibid., p. 121. 

3 Ibid., p. 122. 



86 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

matter is an acute one for Dewey, because of limitations placed 
upon thought. He decides that the idea must be, in some fashion, 
self-selective, must signify its own fitness to a given subject- 
matter. But it can only be self-selective by being itself in the 
nature of an act. It turns out that the generic idea has been 
evolved in connection with acts of judgment, and its own applic- 
ability is born in it. "The activity which selects and employs 
is logical, not extra-logical, just because the tool selected and 
employed has been invented and developed precisely for the 
sake of just such future selection and use." 1 

The logic and system of science must be embodied in the 
individual. He must be a good logical medium, his acts must be 
orderly and consecutive, and generic ideas must have a good 
motor basis in his organism, if he is to think successfully. This 
is the essence of Dewey's argument in the essay under discussion. 
The inference seems to be that logic cannot be separated from 
biology and psychology, since the act of knowing and the ideas 
which it employs have a physiological basis. 

It is difficult to see, however, how such a standpoint could 
prove useful in the practical study of logic. Certainly little 
headway could be made toward a study of the proper use and 
limitations of the categories by an investigation of the human 
nervous system. And to what extent would physiology illu- 
minate the problem of the relation of the generic ideas to their 
appropriate objects? Although Dewey decides that the rela- 
tionship must have its ground in the motor activities of the 
organism, his conclusion has little empirical evidence to support it. 

A practical, workable conception of the relations between 
generic ideas and their objects must be based on considerations 
less obscure. Why not be content to verify, by criticism, the 
truth that experience and thoughts about experience develop 
together, with the result that each theory, hypothesis, or method 
is applicable within the sphere where it was born? Why wait 
upon psychology for confirmation of a truth so obvious and 
important? 

Bosanquet remarks: "Either one may speak as if reality were 

1 Op. cit. 



"STUDIES IN LOGICAL THEORY:' 87 

relative to the individual mind, a ridiculous idea . . . , or one 
may become interested in tracing the germination and growth of 
ideas in the individual mind as typical facts indeed, but only as 
one animal's habits are typical of those of others, and we may 
slur over the primary basis of logic, which is its relation to 
reality. For mental facts unrelated to reality are no knowledge, 
and therefore have no place in logic." 1 Bosanquet emphasizes 
an important truth neglected by Dewey. Logic is not concerned 
with ideas as things existing in individuals, nor with concep- 
tions as individual modes of response. Truth has little to do 
with the individual as such, though the individual might well 
concern himself about truth. Truth is objective, super-indi- 
vidual, and logic is the study of the objective verity of thought. 
The proposition, 'All life is from the living,' finds no premises in 
the nerve tissues of the scientist who accepts it. How does the 
proposition square up with reality or experience? That is the 
question, and it can only be answered by turning away from 
psychology to empirical verification, involving a critical test of 
the applicability of the thought to reality. 

In the strictly ethical part of the essay, Dewey tries to show 
that moral judgments, at least, involve the character of the 
agent and his specific acts as data. Intellectual judgments, on 
the other hand, may disregard the acts of the individual; they 
are left out of account, "when they are so uniform in their 
exercise that they make no difference with respect to the par- 
ticular object or content judged." 2 It will be seen that the dis- 
tinction between moral and intellectual judgments is made on 
the basis of their content. But Dewey is commited to the doc- 
trine that judgments are to be differentiated as acts, on a psy- 
chological basis. In any case, if the character and acts of a man 
are to be judged, they must be treated objectively, and the 
relevance of the judge's ideas to the man's actual character 
cannot be decided by a psychological analysis of the judge's 
mind. Right and wrong, whether moral or intellectual, are not 
attributes of the individual nervous system. 

1 Logic, second ed., Vol. I, p. 232. 

2 Decennial Publication of the University of Chicago, First Series, Vol. Ill, p. 127. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE POLEMICAL PERIOD 

After the publication of the Studies in Logical Theory, Dewey 
entered upon what may be called the polemical period of his 
career. He joined forces with James and Schiller in the pro- 
motion of the new movement called ' Pragmatism.' The Journal 
of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, instituted at 
Columbia University in 1904, the same year in which Dewey 
accepted a professorship in that institution, became a convenient 
medium for the expression of his views, and every volume of 
this periodical will be found to contain notes, discussions, and 
articles by Dewey and his followers, bearing on current con- 
troversy. He also published many articles in other journals, 
technical and popular. In 1910, the most important of these 
essays were collected into a volume, published under the title, 
The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and Other Essays. For 
purposes of discussion, these essays may be divided into two 
classes: those of a more constructive character, setting forth 
Dewey's own standpoint, and those which are mainly polemical, 
directed against opposing standpoints, chiefly the idealistic. 
The constructive writings will be given first consideration. 

The essay on "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism," 
first published in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and 
Scientific Methods, in July, 1905, and later reprinted in the volume 
of collected essays, offers a convenient point of departure. 
Dewey observes that many of the difficulties in current contro- 
versy can be traced to presuppositions tacitly held by thinkers 
as to what experience means. Dewey attempts to make his own 
presuppositions explicit, with the object of clearing up this 
confusion. 

"Immediate empiricism," he says, "postulates that things — 
anything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of the 
term 'thing' — are what they are experienced as. Hence, if one 

88 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 89 

wishes to describe anything truly, his task is to tell what it is 
experienced as being." 1 The idealists, on the contrary, hold 
"that things (or, ultimately, Reality, Being) are only and just 
what they are known to be or that things are, or Reality is, what 
it is for a conscious knower — whether the knower be conceived 
primarily as a perceiver or as a thinker being a further, and 
secondary, question. This is the root-paralogism of all ideal- 
isms, whether subjective or objective, psychological or epistemo- 
logical." 2 Knowing is merely one mode of experiencing, and 
things may be experienced in other ways, as, for instance, aes- 
thetically, morally, technologically, or economically. This 
follows Dewey's familiar division of the processes of experience 
into separate 'functions' or activities. It becomes the duty of 
the philosopher, following this scheme, to find out "what sort 
of an experience knowing is — or, concretely how things are 
experienced when they are experienced as known things." 3 

Dewey fails, in this essay, to draw a distinction which is highly 
important, between knowledge as awareness and knowledge as 
reflection. This results in some confusion. For the present, 
he is concerned with knowledge as awareness. He employs an 
illustration to make his meaning clear; the experience of fright 
at a noise, which turns out, when examined and known, to be the 
tapping of a window shade. What is originally experienced is a 
frightful noise. If, after examination, the ' frightf ulness ' is 
classified as 'psychical,' while the 'real' fact is said to be harm- 
less, there is no warrant for reading this distinction back into 
the original experience. The argument is directed against that 
mode of explaining the difference between the psychical and the 
physical which employs a subjective mind or 'knower' as the 
container of the merely subjective aspects of reality. Dewey 
would hold that mind, used in this sense, is a fiction, having a 
small explanatory value, and creating more problems than it 
solves. The difference between psychical and physical is relative, 

1 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 227. 

2 Ibid., p. 228. In connection with the discussion which follows see Bradley 
"On Our Knowledge of Immediate Experience," in Essays on Truth and Reality, 
Chapter VI. 

3 Ibid., p. 229. 



90 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

not absolute. The frightful noise first heard was neither psy- 
chical nor physical; it was what it was experienced as, and the 
experience contained no such distinction, nor did it contain a 
1 knower.' The noise as known, after the intervention of an act of 
judgment, contained these elements (except the 'knower'), 
but the thing is not merely what it is known as. There is no 
warrant for reading the distinctions made by judgment back 
into a situation where judgment was not operative. The original 
fact was precisely what it was experienced as. 

Dewey's purpose, though not well stated, seems to be the com- 
plete rejection of the notion of knowledge as awareness, or of the 
subjective knower. He discovers at the same time an oppor- 
tunity to substantiate his own descriptive account of knowing 
(or reflection) as an occasional function. The two enterprises, 
however, should be kept distinct. Granting that the subjective 
knower of the older epistemology should be dismissed from 
philosophy, it does not follow that Dewey's special interpretation 
of the function of reflection is the only substitute. 

The principle of immediate empiricism, Dewey says, fur- 
nishes no positive truth. It is simply a method. Not a single 
philosophical proposition can be deduced from it. The applica- 
tion of the method is indicated in the following proposition: 
"If you wish to find out what subjective, objective, physical, 
mental, cosmic, psychic, cause, substance, purpose, activity, 
evil, being, quality — any philosophic term, in short — means, go 
to experience and see what the thing is experienced as." 1 This 
recipe cannot be taken literally. Dewey probably means that 
each concept has, or should have, a positive empirical reference, 
and is significant only in that reference. He is a firm believer, 
however, in the descriptive method. In a note, he remarks that 
he would employ in philosophy "the direct descriptive method 
that has now made its way in all the natural sciences, with such 
modifications, of course, as the subject itself entails." 2 This 
remark calls for closer examination than can be made here. 
It may be said in passing, however, that 'scientific description' 

1 Op. cit., p. 239. 

2 Ibid., p. 240. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 91 

is by no means so simple a method of procedure as Dewey would 
seem to indicate. 'Scientific description,' as actually employed, 
is a highly elaborated and specialized method of dealing with 
experience. The whole subject, indeed, is involved, and requires 
cautious treatment. Dewey's somewhat ingenuous hope, that 
the identification of his method with the methods of science will 
add to its impressiveness, is in danger, unfortunately, of being 
vitiated through the suspicion that he is, after all, not in close 
touch with the methods of science. 

Dewey employs the descriptive method chiefly as a means for 
substantiating his special interpretation of the judgment process. 
His use of the method in this connection is well illustrated by an 
article called "The Experimental Theory of Knowledge" 1 (1906), 
in which he attempts "to find out what sort of an experience 
knowing is" through an appeal to immediate experience. "It 
should be possible," he says, "to discern and describe a knowing 
as one identifies any object, concern, or event. . . . What we 
want is just something which takes itself as knowledge, rightly 
or wrongly." 2 The difficulty lies not in finding a case of know- 
ing, but in describing it when found. Dewey selects a case to be 
described, and, as usual, chooses a simple one. 

"This means," he says, "a specific case, a sample. . . . Our 
recourse is to an example so simple, so much on its face as to be as 
innocent as may be of assumptions. . . . Let us suppose a smell, 
just a floating odor." 3 The level at which this illustration is 
taken is significant. Is it possible to suppose that anything so 
complex, varied, myriad-sided as that something we call know- 
ledge, can be discovered and described within the limits of so 
simple an instance? 

Dewey employs the smell in three situations, the first repre- 
senting the 'non-cognitional,' the second the 'cognitive,' and 
the third the genuinely ' cognitional ' situation. The first, or 
' non-cognitional ' situation is described as follows: "But, let us 
say, the smell is not the smell of the rose ; the resulting change of 
the organism is not a sense of walking and reaching; the delicious 

1 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, pp. 77-1 11. 

2 Ibid., p. 77. 

3 Ibid., p. 78. 



9 2 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

finale is not the fulfilment of the movement, and, through that, 
of the original smell; 'is not,' in each case meaning is 'not ex- 
perienced as' such. We may take, in short, these experiences 
in a brutely serial fashion. The smell, S, is replaced (and dis- 
placed) by a felt movement, K, this is replaced by the gratifi- 
cation, G. Viewed from without, as we are now regarding it, 
there is S-K-G. But from within, for itself, it is now 5, now K, 
now G, and so on to the end of the chapter. Nowhere is there 
looking before and after; memory and anticipation are not born. 
Such an experience neither is, in whole or in part, a knowledge, 
nor does it exercise a cognitive function." 1 

It will be seen at once that this is not a description of an 
actual human experience, but a schematic story designed to 
illustrate a comparatively simple point. In this situation the 
person concerned does not deliberately and consciously recognize 
the smell as the smell of a rose; he is not aware of any symbolic 
character in the smell, it does not enter as a middle term into a 
process of inference. In such a situation, Dewey believes, it 
would be wrong to read into the smell a cognitive property which 
it does not, as experienced, possess. 

In the second, or 'cognitive' situation, the smell as originally 
experienced does not involve the function of knowing, but turns 
out after the event, as reflected upon, to have had a significance. 
"In saying that the smell is finally experienced as meaning 
gratification. . . we retrospectively attribute intellectual force 
and function to the smell — and this is what is signified by ' cog- 
nitive.' Yet the smell is not cognitional, because it did not 
knowingly intend to mean this; but is found, after the event, to 
have meant it." 2 The moral is, as usual, that the findings of 
reflection must not be read back into the former unreflective 
experience. 

In the truly ' cognitional ' experience the smell is then and there 
experienced as meaning or symbolizing the rose. "An experience 
is a knowledge, if in its quale there is an experienced distinction 
and connection of two elements of the following sort: one means 

i Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 84. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 93 

or intends the presence of the other in the same fashion in which itself 
is already present, while the other is that which, while not present in 
the same fashion, must become so present if the meaning or intention 
of its companion or yoke-fellow is to be fulfilled through the operation 
it sets up." 1 In the 'cognitional' situation, the smell is then and 
there experienced as signifying the presence of a rose in the vi- 
cinity, and the rose must be experienced as a present fact, before 
the meaning of the smell is completely fulfilled and verified. 

It will be seen at once that this description of knowing follows 
the lines laid down by James in his chapter on "Reasoning" in 
the Principles of Psychology. In the process of reasoning the 
situation is analyzed; some particular feature of it is abstracted 
and made the middle term in an inference. The smell, as thus 
abstracted, is said to have the function of knowing, or meaning, 
the rose whose reality it evidences. 

Dewey's treatment of knowledge, however, is far too simple. 
The function of meaning, symbolizing, or 'pointing' does not 
reside in the abstracted element as such ; for the context in which 
the judgment occurs determines the choosing of the 'middle 
term,' as well as the direction in which it shall point. The 
situation as a whole has a rationality which resides in the dis- 
tinctions, identities, phases of emphasis, and discriminations of 
the total experience. Rationality expresses itself in the organized 
system of experience, not in particular elements and their ' point- 
ings.' Taken in this sense, rationality is present in all experience. 
The smell, in Dewey's first situation, is not ' cognitional ' because 
the situation as a whole does not permit it to be, if such an expres- 
sion may be used. The intellectual drift of the moment drives 
the smell away from the centre of attention at one time, just as at 
another it selects it to serve as an element in judgment. It is 
only with reference to a system of some kind that things can be 
regarded as symbols at all. Things do not represent one another 
at haphazard, but definitely and concretely; they imply an or- 
ganization of elements having mutual implications. One thing 
implies another because both are elements in a whole which 
determines their mutual reference. This organization is present 

1 Op. cit., p. 90. Author's italics. 



04 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

in all experience, not in the form of 'established habits,' but in 
the form of will and purpose. 

In the course of his further discussion, which need not be fol- 
lowed in detail, Dewey passes on to a consideration of truth. 
Truth is concerned with the worth or validity of ideas. But, 
before their validity can be determined, there must be a 'cog- 
nitional' experience of the type described above. "Before the 
category of confirmation or refutation can be introduced, there 
must be something which means to mean something and which 
therefore can be guaranteed or nullified by the issue." 1 Ideas, 
or meanings, as directly experienced, are neither true nor false, 
but are made so by the results in which they issue. Even then, 
the outcome must be reflected upon, before they can be desig- 
nated true or false. "Truth and falsity present themselves as 
significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and 
their already experienced fulfilments and non-fulfilments are inten- 
tionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of 
the worth, as to reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or class 
of meanings" 2 This makes the whole problem of truth a rela- 
tively simple affair. The symbol and its 'pointing' are taken as 
a single, objective fact, to be tested, and, if verified, labelled 
'true.' Meanings, after all, are not so simple as this scheme 
would imply. 

As the intellectual life of man is more subtle and universal 
than Dewey represents it to be, so is truth, as that which thought 
seeks to establish, something deeper-lying and more compre- 
hensive. Ideas are not simple and isolated facts; their truth is 
not strictly their own, but is reflected into them from the objec- 
tive order to which they pertain. The possibility of making 
observations and experiments, and of having ideas, rests upon 
the presence in and through experience of that directing influence 
which we call valid knowledge, or truth. An idea, to be true, 
must fit in with this general body of truth. Not correspondence 
with its single object, but correspondence with the whole organ- 
ized body of knowledge, is the test of the truth of an idea. The 
attempt to describe knowledge as a particular occurrence, fact, 

1 Op. cit., p. 87. 

2 Ibid., p. 95. Author's italics. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 95 

or function, is foredoomed to failure. It should be noted also 
that Dewey's 'description,' throughout this essay, is anything 
but a direct, empirical examination of thought. He presents 
a schematized picture of reality which, like an engineer's diagram, 
leaves out the cloying details of the object it is supposed to 
represent. 

The sceptical and positivistic results of Dewey's treatment of 
knowledge are set forth in an article entitled "Some Implications 
of Anti-Intellectualism," published in the Journal of Philosophy, 
Psychology, and Scientific Methods, in 1910. 1 This was not in- 
cluded in the volume of collected essays published in the same 
year, but may be regarded as of some importance. 

After some comments on current anti-intellectualistic ten- 
dencies, Dewey proceeds to distinguish his own anti-intellectual- 
ism from that of others. This type "starts from acts, functions, 
as primary data, functions both biological and social in char- 
acter; from organic responses, readjustments. It treats the 
knowledge standpoint, in all its patterns, structures, and pur- 
poses, as evolving out of, and operating in the interests of, the 
guidance and enrichment of these primary functions. The vice 
of intellectualism from this standpoint is not in making of logical 
relations and functions in and for knowledge, but in a false 
abstraction of knowledge (and the logical) from its working 
context." 2 

The manner in which this exaltation of the "primary" func- 
tions at the expense of knowledge affects philosophy is indicated 
in the following passage : " Philosophy is itself a mode of knowing, 
and of knowing wherein reflective thinking is much in play. . . . 
As a mode of knowledge, it arises, like any intellectual undertak- 
ing, out of certain typical perplexities and conflicts of behavior, 
and its purpose is to help straighten these out. Philosophy may 
indeed render things more intelligible or give greater insight into 
existence; but these considerations are subject to the final cri- 
terion of what it means to acquire insight and to make things 
intelligible, i. e., namely, service of special purposes in behavior, 
and limit by the special problems in which the need of insight 

1 Vol. VII, pp. 477-481. 

2 Ibid., p. 478. 



96 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

arises. This is not to say that instrumentalism is merely a 
methodology or an epistemology preliminary to more ultimate 
philosophic or metaphysical inquiries, for it involves the doctrine 
that the origin, structure, and purpose of knowing are such as to 
render nugatory any wholesale inquiries into the nature of 
Being." 1 

In the last analysis, this appears to be a confession, rather 
than an argument. It is the inevitable outcome of the functional 
analysis of intelligence. Thought is this organ, with these 
functions, and is capable of so much and no more. The limit 
to its capacity is set by the description of its nature. The nature 
of the functionalistic limitation of thought is well expressed in 
the words 'special' and 'specific' Since thought is the servant 
of the 'primary' modes of experience, it can only deal with the 
problems set for it by preceding non-reflective processes. These 
problems are 'specific' because they are concrete problems of 
action, and are concerned with particular aspects of the environ- 
ment. Dewey's formidable positivism would vanish at once, 
however, if his special psychology of the thought-process should 
be found untenable. Thought is limited, according to Dewey, 
because it is a very special form of activity, operating occasionally 
in the interest of the direct modes of experiencing. 

Probably every philosopher recognizes that speculation cannot 
be allowed to run wild. Some problems are worth while, others 
are artificial and trivial, and some means must be found for 
separating the sound and substantial from the tawdry and senti- 
mental. The question is, however, whether Dewey's psychology 
furnishes a ground for such distinctions. Again, it should be 
noted that, in spite of the limitations placed upon thought by its 
very nature, as described by Dewey, certain philosophers, by 
his own confession, are guilty of "wholesale inquiries into the 
nature of Being." If thought can deal only with specific prob- 
lems, then there can be no question as to whether philosophy 
ought to be metaphysical. It is a repetition of the case of psy- 
chological versus ethical hedonism. 

Modern idealists would resent the imputation that there is any 

1 Op. cit., p. 479. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 97 

inclination on their part to deny the need for a critical attitude 
toward the problems and methods of philosophy. Kant's 
criticism of the 'dogmatists' for their undiscriminating employ- 
ment of the categories in the interpretation of reality, established 
an attitude which has been steadily maintained by his philoso- 
phical descendants. The idealist, in fact, has accused Dewey 
of laxity in the criticism of his own methods and presuppositions. 
The categories of description and natural selection by means of 
which his functionalism is established, it is argued, are of little 
service in the sphere of mind. And while Dewey accepts an 
evolutionary view of reality in general, the idealist has found 
evolutionism, at least in its biological form, too limited in scope 
to serve the extensive interests of philosophy. Dewey is right 
in opposing false problems and fanciful solutions in philosophy; 
but these evils are to be corrected, not by functional psychology, 
but by an empirical criticism of each method and each problem 
as it arises. 

It has been seen that, even in these more constructive essays, 
Dewey's position is largely defined in negatives. What might 
be expected, then, of the essays which are primarily critical? 
Perhaps the best answer will be afforded by a close analysis of 
one or more of them. Idealism, as has been said, receives most 
of Dewey's attention. There are three essays in The Influence 
of Darwin on Philosophy, which bear directly against idealism. 
One, "The Intellectualist Criterion of Truth," is directed against 
Bradley; another, " Experience and Objective Idealism," is a 
historical discussion of idealistic views. The third, which is 
broadest in scope, is entitled "Beliefs and Existences." This 
was originally delivered as the presidential address at the meeting 
of the American Philosophical Association in December, 1905, 
and was printed in the Philosophical Review in March, 1906, 
under the title, "Beliefs and Realities." 

Dewey begins with a discussion of the personal and human 
character of beliefs. "Beliefs," he says, "look both ways, 
towards persons and towards things. . . . They form or judge — 
justify or condemn — the agents who entertain them and who in- 
sist upon them. ... To believe is to ascribe value, impute 



98 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

meaning, assign import." 1 Beliefs are entertained by persons; 
by men as individuals and not as professional beings. Because 
they are essentially human, beliefs issue in action, and have their 
import in conduct. "That believed better is held to, asserted, 
affirmed, acted upon. . . . That believed worse is fled, resisted, 
transformed into an instrument for the better." 2 Beliefs, then, 
have a human side; they belong to people, and have a character 
which is expressed in the conduct to which they lead. 

On the other hand, beliefs look towards things. "'Reality' 
naturally instigates belief. It appraises itself and through this 
self-appraisal manages its affairs. . . . It is interpretation; not 
merely existence aware of itself as fact, but existence discerning, 
judging itself, approving and disapproving." 3 The vital con- 
nection between belief as personal, and as directed upon things, 
cannot be disregarded. "We cannot keep connection on one 
side and throw it away on the other. We cannot preserve 
significance and decline the personal attitude in which it is 
inscribed and operative. . . . " 4 To take the world as some- 
thing existing by itself, is to overlook the fact that it is always 
somebody's world, "and you shall not have completed your 
metaphysics till you have told whose world is meant and how 
and what for — in what bias and to what effect." 5 

But philosophers have been guilty of error here. They have 
thrown aside all consideration of belief as a personal fact in 
reality, and have taken "an oath of allegiance to Reality, ob- 
jective, universal, complete; made perhaps of atoms, perhaps of 
sensations, perhaps of logical meanings." 6 This Reality leaves 
no place for belief; for belief, as having to do with human ad- 
ventures, can have no place in a cut and dried cosmos. The 
search for a world which is eternally fixed in eternal meanings has 
developed the present wondrous and formidable technique of 
philosophy. 

1 Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 169. 

2 Ibid., p. 170. 

3 Ibid., p. 171. 

4 Ibid. 

5 Ibid. 

6 Ibid., p. 172. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 99 

The attempt to exclude the human element from belief has 
resulted in philosophical errors. Philosophers have divided 
reality into two parts, "one of which shall alone be good and 
true 'Reality,' . . . while the other part, that which is excluded, 
shall be referred exclusively to belief and treated as mere ap- 
pearance. . . . ni To cap the climax, this division of the world 
into two parts must be made by some philosopher who, being 
human, employs his own beliefs, and classifies things on the basis 
of his own experience. Can it be done? We are today in the 
presence of a revolt against such tendencies, Dewey says; and he 
proposes to give some sketch, "(i) of the historical tendencies 
which have shaped the situation in which a Stoic theory of 
knowledge claims metaphysical monopoly, and (2) of the tenden- 
cies that have furnished the despised principle of belief oppor- 
tunity and means of reassertion." 2 

Throughout this introduction Dewey speaks with considerable 
feeling, as if the question were a moral one, rather than a dis- 
quisition concerning the best method of dealing with the personal 
aspects of thought. His meaning, however, is far from being 
apparent. What does it mean to say that a Stoic theory of 
knowledge holds a monopoly in modern philosophy? In what 
sense has the philosophy of the past been misanthropic? Is 
Humanism a product of the twentieth century? Dewey's 
assertions are broad and sweeping; too broad even for a popular 
discourse, let alone a philosophical address. Perhaps his attitude 
will be more fully expressed in the historical inquiry which follows. 

Dewey begins this inquiry with the period of the rise of Chris- 
tianity, which, because it emphasized faith and the personal 
attitude, seemed in a fair way to do justice to human belief. 
"That the ultimate principle of conduct is affectional and 
volitional; that God is love; that access to the principle is by 
faith, a personal attitude; that belief, surpassing logical basis 
and warrant, works out through its own operation its own ful- 
filling evidence : such was the implied moral metaphysic of Chris- 
tianity." 3 But these implications had to be worked out into a 

1 Op. cil., p. 175. 

2 Ibid., p. 177. 

3 Ibid., p. 17 7 . 



100 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

theory, and the only logical or metaphysical systems which 
offered themselves as a basis for organization were those Stoic 
systems which "identified true existence with the proper object 
of logical reason." Aristotle alone among the ancients gave 
practical thought its due attention, but he, unfortunately, failed 
to assimilate "his idea of theoretical to his notion of practical 
knowledge." 1 In the Greek systems generally, "desiring reason 
culminating in beliefs relating to imperfect existence, stands 
forever in contrast with passionless reason functioning in pure 
knowledge, logically complete, of perfect being." 2 

Dewey's discussion moves too rapidly here to be convincing. 
He does not take time, for instance, to make a very important 
distinction between the Greek and Hellenistic philosophies. 
He does not do justice to the purpose which animated the Greeks 
in their attempt to put thought on a 'theoretical' basis. His 
confusion of Platonism with Neo-Platonism is especially annoy- 
ing. And, most assuredly, his estimate of primitive Christianity 
needs corroboration. Probably Christianity, in its primitive 
form, did lay great stress upon individual beliefs and persuasions, 
but it was expected, nevertheless, that the Holy Spirit working 
in men would produce uniform results in the way of belief. 
When the uniformity failed to materialize, Christianity was 
forced, in the interests of union, to fall back upon some objective 
standard by which belief could be tested. After this was estab- 
lished, an end was made of individual inspiration. From the 
earliest times, therefore, it may be said, Christianity sought 
means for the suppression of free inquiry and belief, a proceeding 
utterly opposed to the spirit of ancient Greece. 

"I need not remind you," Dewey continues, "how through 
Neo-Platonism, St. Augustine, and the Scholastic renaissance, 
these conceptions became imbedded in Christian philosophy; 
and what a reversal occurred of the original practical principle of 
Christianity. Belief is henceforth important because it is the 
mere antecedent in a finite and fallen world, a temporal and 
phenomenal world infected with non-being, of true knowledge to 

1 Op. cit., p. 179. 

2 Ibid. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 101 

be achieved only in a world of completed Being." 1 Through the 
hundreds of years that intervened before the world's awakening, 
the 'Stoic dogma,' enforced by authority, held the world in thrall. 
And still Dewey finds the mediaeval Absolutism in many re- 
spects more merciful than the Absolutism of modern philosophy. 
"For my part, I can but think that mediaeval absolutism, with 
its provision for authoritative supernatural assistance in this 
world and assertion of supernatural realization in the next, was 
more logical, as well as more humane, then the modern absolut- 
ism, that, with the same logical premises, bids man find adequate 
consolation and support in the fact that, after all, his strivings 
are already eternally fulfilled, his errors already eternally trans- 
cended, his partial beliefs already eternally comprehended." 2 
Dewey takes no note of the fact that philosophy, as involving 
really free inquiry, was dead during the whole period of mediaeval 
predominance. 

The modern age, Dewey continues, brought intelligence back 
to earth again, but only partially. Fixed being was still sup- 
posed to be the object of thought. "The principle of the in- 
herent relation of thought to being was preserved intact, but its 
practical locus was moved down from the next world to this." 3 
Aristotle's mode of dealing with the Platonic ideas was followed, 
and Spinoza was the great exponent of "the strict correlation of 
the attribute of matter with the attribute of thought." 

But, again, the modern conception of knowledge failed to do 
justice to belief, in spite of the compromise that gave the natural 
world to intelligence, and the spiritual world to faith. This 
compromise could not endure, for Science encroached upon the 
field of religious belief, and invaded the sphere of the personal 
and emotional. "Knowledge, in its general theory, as philoso- 
phy, went the same way. It was pre-committed to the old 
notion: the absolutely real is the object of knowledge, and hence is 
something universal and impersonal. So, whether by the road 
of sensationalism or rationalism, by the path of mechanicalism 
or objective idealism, it came about that concrete selves, specific 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 180. 

3 Ibid., p. 181. 



102 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

feeling and willing beings, were relegated with the beliefs in 
which they declare themselves to the 'phenomenal.'" 1 Feeling, 
volition, desiring thought have never received the justice due 
them in the whole course of philosophy. This is Dewey's con- 
clusion. Little can be said in praise of his historical survey. 
There is scarcely a statement to which exception could not be 
taken, for the history of philosophy is not amenable to generalized 
treatment of this character. 

The reader turns more hopefully toward the third part of the 
essay, in which he is promised a positive statement of the new 
theory which does full justice to belief. "First, then, the very 
use of the knowledge standpoint,- the very expression of the 
knowledge preoccupation, has produced methods and tests that, 
when formulated, intimate a radically different conception of 
knowledge, and of its relation to existence and belief, than the 
orthodox one." 2 

But after this not unpromising introduction, Dewey falls into 
the polemical strain again. The argument need not be followed 
in detail, since it consists largely in a reassertion of the validity 
of belief as an element in knowledge. The general conclusion is 
that modern scientific investigation reveals itself, when exam- 
ined, as nothing more that the "rendering into a systematic 
technique, into an art deliberately and delightfully pursued, the 
rougher and cruder means by which practical human beings have 
in all ages worked out the implications of their beliefs, tested 
them, and endeavored in the interests of economy, efficiency, 
and freedom, to render them coherent with one another." 3 
This is presumably true. If no more is implied than is definitely 
asserted in this passage, the reader is apt to wonder who would 
deny it. 

Dewey again claims for his theory the support of modern 
science. "Biology, psychology, and the social sciences proffer 
an imposing body of concrete facts that also point to the re- 
habilitation of belief. . . . " 4 Psychology has revised its 

1 Op. cit., p. 183. 

2 Ibid., p. 184. 

3 Ibid., p. 187. 
A Ibid., p. 189. 



THE POLEMICAL PERIOD. 103 

notions in terms of beliefs. 'Motor* is writ large on the face of 
sensation, perception, conception, cognition in general. Biology 
shows that the organic instruments of the intellectual life were 
evolved for specifically practical purposes. The historical 
sciences show that knowledge is a social instrument for the 
purpose of meeting social needs. This testimony is not philoso- 
phy, Dewey says, but it has a bearing on philosophy. The new 
sciences have at least as much importance as mathematics and 
physics. "Such being the case, the reasons for ruling psychology 
and sociology and allied sciences out of competency to give 
philosophic testimony have more significance than the bare 
denial of jurisdiction." 1 The idealists, apparently, have been 
the worst offenders in this connection. "One would be almost 
justified in construing idealism as a Pickwickian scheme, so 
willing is it to idealize the principle of intelligence at the expense 
of its specific undertakings, were it not that this reluctance is 
the necessary outcome of the Stoic basis and tenor of idealism — 
its preoccupation with logical contents and relations in abstrac- 
tion from their situs and function in conscious living beings." 2 

In conclusion, Dewey warns against certain possible misunder- 
standings. The pragmatic philosopher, he says, is not opposed 
to objective realities, and logical and universal thinking. Again, 
it is not to be supposed that science is any the less exact by reason 
of being instrumental to human beliefs. "Because reason is a 
scheme of working out the meanings of convictions in terms of 
one another and of the consequences they import in further ex- 
perience, convictions are the more, not the less, amenable and 
responsible to the full exercise of reason." 3 And finally, Dewey 
assures the reader that the outcome of his discussion is not a 
solution, but a problem. Nobody is apt to dispute that state- 
ment. 

This very unsatisfactory essay is, nevertheless, a fair specimen 
of the polemical literature which was produced by Dewey and 
others during these years. Pragmatism was trying to make 
converts, and the argumentum ad hominem was freely employed. 

1 Op. cit., p. 190. 

2 Ibid., p. 191 f. 

3 Ibid., p. 194. 



104 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

If the opposition was painted a good deal blacker than was 
necessary, the end was supposed to justify the evident exaggera- 
tion. And so, in this essay, after accusing his contemporaries of 
adherence to tenets that they would have indignantly repudiated, 
after a wholesale and indiscrimate condemnation of idealism, 
Dewey concludes with — a problem. This period of propaganda 
is now quite definitely a thing of the past. Philosophical dis- 
cussion, especially since the beginning of the great war, has 
entered upon a new epoch of sanity, and, perhaps, of constructive 
effort. 



CHAPTER VIII 

LATER DEVELOPMENTS 

Neo-realism began to nourish in this country after 1900, its 
rise being nearly contemporary with the spread of pragmatism. 
Many neo-realists, indeed, consider themselves followers of 
James. Dewey views the new realism, along with pragmatism 
and 'naturalistic idealism,' as "part and parcel of a general 
movement of intellectual reconstruction." 1 The neo-realists, 
like the pragmatists, have been active in the field of controversy, 
and the pages of the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and 
Scientific Methods are filled with exchanges between the repre- 
sentatives of the two schools, in the form of notes, articles, dis- 
cussions, agreements, and disclaimers. Dewey has more sym- 
pathy for realism than for idealism. He finds among the writers 
of this school, however, a tendency toward the epistemological 
interpretation of thought which he so strongly opposes. An 
excellent statement of his estimate of realism is furnished by his 
"Brief Studies in Realism," published in the Journal of Philoso- 
phy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, in 191 1. 2 

In beginning these studies Dewey observes that certain ideal- 
istic writers (not named) have been employing in support of their 
idealism certain facts which have an obvious physical nature and 
explanation. Such illusions as that of the bent stick in the water, 
the converging railway tracks, and the double image that occurs 
when the eye-ball is pressed, have, as the realists have well 
proved, a physical explanation which is entirely adequate. 
Why is it that the idealists remain unimpressed by this demon- 
stration? There is a certain element in the realistic explanation 
which undoubtedly explains the reluctance of the idealists to be 
convinced. "Many realists, in offering the type of explanation 

1 Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, Introduction, p. iv. 

2 Vol. VIII: "I. Naive Realism vs. Presentative Realism," pp. 393-400. "II. 
Epistemological Realism: The Alleged Ubiquity of the Knowledge Relation," 
PP. 546-554. 

105 



106 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

adduced above, have treated the cases of seen light, doubled 
imagery, as perception in a way that ascribes to perception an 
inherent cognitive status. They have treated the perceptions 
as cases of knowledge, instead of as simply natural events. . . . M1 

Dewey draws a distinction, at this point, between naive and 
presentative realism, employing, by way of illustration, the 'star' 
illusion, which turns upon the peculiar fact that a star may be 
seen upon the earth long after it has ceased to exist. The naive 
realist remains in the sphere of natural explanation. He ac- 
counts for the star illusion in physical terms. The astronomical 
star and the perceived star are two physical events within a 
continuous physical order or process. But the presentative 
realist maintains that, since the two stars are numerically separ- 
ate, the astronomical star must be the ' real ' star, while the per- 
ceived star is merely mental ; the real star exists in independence 
of a knowing subject, while the perceived star is related to a 
mind. The naive realist has no need of the hypothesis of a 
knower, since he can furnish an adequate physical account of the 
numerical duplicity of the star. Dewey favors the naive stand- 
point, and affirms that presentative realism is tainted by an 
epistemological subjectivism. "Once depart," he says, "from 
this thorough naivete, and substitute for it the psychological 
theory that perception is a cognitive presentation of an object 
to a mind, and the first step is taken on the road which ends in 
an idealistic system." 2 

The presentative realist, Dewey continues, finds himself pos- 
sessed of two kinds of knowledge, when he comes to take account 
of inference; for inference is "in the field as an obvious and un- 
disputed case of knowledge." There is the knowledge of per- 
ception by a knower, and the inferential knowledge which passes 
beyond perception. All reality, consequently, is related, directly 
or indirectly, to the knowing subject, and idealism is triumphant. 
But the real difficulty of the realist's position is that, if perception 
is a mode of knowing, it stands in unfavorable contrast with 
knowledge by inference. How can the inferred reality of the 

1 0p. cit., p. 395. 
2 Ibid., p. 397. 



LATER DEVELOPMENTS. 107 

star be established, considering the subjectivity of all perception? 

Dewey is alert to the dangers which result from subjectivism, 
but does not distinguish, as carefully as he might, between know- 
ledge as inference, and knowledge as perceptual awareness. 
Thus, while it might be granted that the subjective mind is a 
vicious abstraction, it does not follow that Dewey's particular 
interpretation of the function of inference is correct. And, 
although the "unwinking, unremitting eye" of the subjective 
knower might make experience merely a mental affair, there is 
no reason to believe that the operation of inference in perception 
would lead to the same result, for inference and awareness are 
quite distinct, in historical meaning and function. It is, in 
fact, a mere accident that inference and awareness (in the sub- 
jective sense) should both be called knowledge. 

In opposition to presentative realism, Dewey offers his 'natural- 
istic' interpretation of knowledge. 1 He finds that the function 
of inference, "although embodying the logical relation, is itself 
a natural and specifically detectable process among natural 
things — it is not a non-natural or epistemological relation, that 
is, a relation to a mind or knower not in the natural series. . . ." 2 
As has been observed, Dewey is safe in maintaining that in- 
ference is not an operation performed by a subjective knower, but 
it does not follow from this that his interpretation of inference is 
correct. In fact, a discussion of inference is irrelevant to the 
matters which Dewey is here considering. 

In the second part of the essay, the discussion passes into a 
keen and rather clever recital of the difficulties that result from 
taking the knowledge relation to be 'ubiquitous.' 3 Since this 

1 In this connection Dewey's disagreements with Professor McGilvary are of 
especial interest. See especially McGilvary's article, "Pure Experience and Real- 
ity" {Philosophical Review, Vol. XVI, 1907, pp. 266-284) and Dewey's reply, to- 
gether with McGilvary's rejoinder {Ibid., pp. 419-424). McGilvary failed to 
understand that Dewey's argument was conducted on a purely ' naturalistic ' basis, 
an almost inevitable error, in view of Dewey's practical identification of psychology, 
biology, and logic. 

2 Ibid., p. 399. 

3 Dewey is here dealing with the ' epistemological' realists, among whom he 
includes such writers as Bertrand Russell. In an article entitled "The Existence 
of the World as a Problem" {Philosophical Review, Vol. XXIV, 1915, pp. 357-370), 
Dewey argues that Russell, in making a problem of the existence of the external 



108 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

relation is a constant factor in experience, it would seem as if it 
might be eliminated from philosophical calculations. The 
realist would be glad to eliminate it, but the idealist is not so 
willing; for, "since the point at issue is precisely the statement of 
the most universally defining trait of existence as existence, the 
invitation deliberately to disregard the most universal trait 
is nothing more or less than an invitation to philosophic sui- 
cide." 1 It is, Dewey says, as if two philosophers should set 
out to ascertain the relation which holds between an organism as 
'eater' and the environment as 'food,' and one should find the 
essential thing to be the food, the other the eating. The ' food- 
ists' would represent the realists, the 'eaterists' the idealists. 
No advance, he believes, can be made on this basis. 

In opposition to the epistemologists, Dewey would consider 
the knowledge relation not ubiquitous, but specific and occa- 
sional. As man bears other relations to his environment than 
that of eater, so is he also something more than a knower. "If 
the one who is knower is, in relation to objects, something else 
and more than their knower, and if objects are, in relation to the 
one who knows them, something else and other than things in a 
knowledge relation, there is somewhat to define and discuss. 
. . . " 2 Dewey proposes to advance certain facts to support his 
contention that knowing is "a relation to things which depends 
upon other and more primary connections between a self and 
things ; a relation which grows out of these more fundamental 
connections and which operates in their interests at specifiable 
crises." 3 

This brings the discussion back to familiar ground again, and 
nothing is added to his previous statements of the functional 
conception of knowledge. While the realist (explicitly or im- 
plicitly) conceives the knowledge relation as obtaining between a 
subject knower and the external world, Dewey interprets the 

world, implies its existence in his formulation of the problem. Dewey argues that, 
since the existence of the world is presupposed in every such formulation, it cannot 
be called in question. This is like disposing of Zeno's paradox on the ground that 
arrows fly anyway. 

1 Op. cit., p. 548. 

2 Ibid., p. 552. 

3 Ibid. 






LATER DEVELOPMENTS. 109 

knowledge relation in terms of organism and environment. 
The 'ubiquity' of the knowledge relation is disposed of, as has 
been seen, by conceiving knowledge from an entirely different 
standpoint; by reducing all knowledge to inference, and abolish- 
ing the knowing subject. Dewey is plainly under the impression 
that the only alternative to the ubiquitous knower is his natural- 
istic, biological interpretation of the processes of inference. 

In support of his naturalistic logic, Dewey argues as follows: 
(1) All perception involves reference to an organism. "We 
might about as well talk of the production of a specimen case of 
water as a presentation of water to hydrogen as talk in the way we 
are only too accustomed to talk about perceptions and the or- 
ganism." 1 (2) Awareness is only a single phase of experience. 
We 'know' only a small part of the causes which affect us as 
agents. "This means, of course, that things, the things that 
come to be known, are primarily not objects of awareness, but 
causes of weal and woe, things to get and things to avoid, means 
and obstacles, tools and results." 2 (3) Knowing is only a special 
phase of the behaver-enjoyer-sufferer situation, but very im- 
portant as having to do with means for the practical and scien- 
tific control of the environment. 

In the final analysis, it will be seen that Dewey refutes the 
realist by substituting inference for what the realist calls 'con- 
sciousness,' and settling the issue by this triumph in the field of 
dialectics, rather than by an appeal to the facts. Nowhere does 
Dewey do justice to those concrete situations which, to the 
realist, seem to necessitate a definition of consciousness as aware- 
ness. His attitude toward the realists may be summed up in the 
statement that he finds in most realistic systems the fault to 
which his logical theory is especially opposed: the tendency to 
define the problem of logic as that of the relation of thought at 
large to reality at large, and to distinguish the content of mind 
from the content of the world on an existential rather than on 
a functional basis. 

One of Dewey's more recent studies, "The Logic of Judgments 

1 Op. cit. 

2 Ibid., p. 553. 



HO JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

of Practise," 1 seems to add something positive to his interpre- 
tation of knowledge. A practical judgment, Dewey explains 
at the outset of this study, is differentiated from others, not by 
having a separate organ and source, but by having a specific 
sort of subject-matter. It is concerned with things to be done 
or situations demanding action. "He had better consult a 
physician," and "It would be well for you to invest in these 
bonds," are examples of the practical judgment. 

These propositions, as will be seen, are not cast in what the 
logician calls logical form, with regular terms and copula. When 
put in that form, they seem to lose the direct reference to action 
which, Dewey says, differentiates them from the 'descriptive' 
judgment of the form 5 is P. 2 This apparently trivial matter is 
really important. Although every statement embodies j udgment , 
some statements do not reflect the ground upon which they are 
asserted. In this condition they may be viewed as opinions, 
suggestions, or guesses, looking towards judgment rather than 
reflecting its results. True judgment is occupied with reasons, 
proofs, and grounds, and does not concern itself with action as 
action. Only when taken as the expression of an individual's 
attitude, do Dewey's practical judgments (or assertions) possess 
the direct reference to action which he selects as their chief char- 
acteristic. The statement, " You ought to invest in these bonds," 
does, indeed, suggest a specific action, but in so doing it loses its 
character as a judgment. Put in more logical form, "You are 
one of those who should invest in these bonds," the proposition 
is more clearly the expression of a judgment, and leads back to 
its premises. Attention turns from specific action as such to 
action as a typical or universal fact. In short, Dewey's practical 
judgment is not a true judgment; it will be seen that it is studied, 
not as a logical, but as a psychological phenomenon. 

In pursuance of his psychological method, Dewey discovers 
several interesting facts about judgments of practice, (i) 
These judgments imply an incomplete situation, — concretely 
and specifically incomplete; they express a need. (2) The judg- 

1 Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. XII, 191 5. 
Parts I and II, pp. 505-523; Part III, pp. 533~543- 

2 Ibid., p. 506. 



LATER DEVELOPMENTS. HI 

merit is itself a factor in assisting toward the completion of the 
situation, since it directs an action necessary to the fulfilment 
of the need. (3) The subject-matter of the judgment expresses 
the fact that one outcome is to be preferred to another. The 
element of preference is peculiar to the practical judgment, for 
it is not found in merely descriptive judgments, or those 'con- 
fined to the given.' (4) A practical judgment implies both means 
and end, the act that completes, and the completeness. It is in 
this respect 'binary.' (5) The judgment of what is to be done 
demands an accurate statement of the course of action to be 
pursued and the means to be employed, and these are to be de- 
termined relatively to the end in view. (6) It finally appears 
that what is true of the practical judgment may be true of all 
judgments of fact; it may be held that "all judgments of fact 
have reference to a determination of courses of action to be tried 
and the discovery of means for their attempted realization." 1 

This ingenious reading of functionalism out of the practical 
judgment is, after all, merely a drawing forth of the psychological 
implications previously placed in it. That judgment is an in- 
strument for completing a situation; that it is linked up with 
action through desire and preference; that it seeks to determine 
the means for effecting a practical outcome, — these typically 
instrumental notions are of one piece with the system of belief 
that led Dewey to hit upon the practical judgment as the em- 
bodiment of a direction to action. It is important to distinguish 
between the logical and the psychological aspects of these 
propositions. Action as psychological is one thing; as the sub- 
ject-matter of judgment, it is another. In coming to a decision 
as to how to act, the agent sets his proposed action over against 
himself, and considers it in its universal and typical character. 
His motor tendencies, his feelings, his desires factor in the situa- 
tion psychologically considered; but they do not enter judgment 
as psychological facts, but rather, if at all, as data which have 
a significance beyond their mere particularity. Dewey remains 
at the psychological standpoint, giving no attention to the genu- 
inely logical aspects of his 'judgments of practice.' 

1 Op. cit., p. 511. 



112 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

From the study of the practical judgment, Dewey passes on 
to a consideration of judgments of value, proposing to maintain 
that "value judgments are a species of practical judgments." 1 
There will be a distinct gain for moral and economic theory, he 
believes, in treating value as concerned with acts necessary to 
complete a given need-situation. There is no obvious reason 
why Dewey should pass to the pragmatic theory of value through 
the medium of the practical judgment, since it could be directly 
considered on its own account. At any rate, the discussion of 
value judgments which follows must stand on its own merits; it 
has no vital relation to what precedes. 

It is, as usual, the psychological characteristics of the value 
judgment that attract Dewey's attention. Any process of 
judgment, according to his analysis, deals with a specific subject- 
matter, not from the standpoint of any objective quality it may 
possess, but with reference to its functional capacity. "Relative, 
or comparative, durability, cheapness, suitability, style, esthetic 
attractiveness [e. g., in a suit of clothes] constitute value traits. 
They are traits of objects not per se } but as entering into a possible 
and foreseen completing of the situation. Their value is their 
force in precisely this function." 2 

Attention should not be distracted from this interpretation of 
value, Dewey warns, through confusing the value sought with 
the price or market value of the goods. Price values, like the 
qualities and patterns of the goods, are data which must be con- 
sidered in making the judgment, but they are not the values which 
the judgment seeks. The value to be determined is here, is 
specific, and must be established by reference to the specific or 
psychological situation as it presents itself. 

It is true, as Dewey says, that in judgment a value is being 
established which has not been determined previously. But it 
must be insisted that this value is not estimated by reference to 
the specific situation in its limited aspects. The weight of the 
past bears against the moment; the act of judgment bases itself 
upon knowledge objective and substantial; the test of the value 

1 Op. cit., p. 514. 
*Ibid„ p. 515- 



LATER DEVELOPMENTS. 1 13 

of the thing is its place and function, not in the here and now, but 
in the whole system of experience. Dewey has excluded the 
reference of the thing to objective, organized reality, by specify- 
ing that its value shall be decided upon with reference to a 
specific situation. This limitation of the judgment situation is 
imposed upon it from without, and from a special point of view, — 
that of functional psychology. Every object and every situation 
has its quality of uniqueness and particularity; but the judgment, 
as judgment, is not concerned with this aspect of things. Judg- 
ment seizes upon the generic aspect of objects; this kind of a 
suit of clothes is the kind that is appropriate to this type of 
situation. The movement of judgment is objective and uni- 
versal, not subjective and psychological. 

Dewey finds one alternative especially opposed to his ' specific ' 
judgment of value; that is, the proposition that evaluation in- 
volves a comparison of the present object with some fixed 
standard. When the fixed standard is investigated, it is found 
to depend on something else, and this on something else again 
in an infinite regress. Finally, the Summum Bonum, as the 
absolute end term of such a regressus, turns out to be a fiction. 
Dewey is quite right in maintaining that value is not something 
eternally fixed. This does not, however, remove the possibility 
of 'real' value, as opposed to mere expediency. 

Value as established, Dewey continues, must be taken into 
consideration in making a value judgment. At the same time, 
it will not do to accept the established value from mere force 
of habit. Ultimately, he finds, all genuine valuation implies 
a degree of revaluation. "To many," he observes, "it will 
appear to be a survival of an idealistic epistemology," 1 pre- 
sumably because it implies a real change in reality, as opposed to 
a fixed and rigid order of external reality. But practical judg- 
ments, Dewey says, as having reference to proposed acts, neces- 
sarily look toward some proposed change which the act is to 
effect. It is not in an epistemological, but in a practical sense, 
that judgment involves a change in values. 

The outcome of the discussion so far, Dewey believes, is to 

1 Op. cit., p. 521. 



114 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

show, first of all, that "the passage of a proposition into action 
is not a miracle, but the realization of its own character — its own 
meaning as logical," 1 and, in the second place, to suggest that all 
judgments, not merely practical ones, may have their import in 
reference to some difference to be brought about through action. 

In the third part of the essay, Dewey's discussion leads him 
back to sense perceptions as forms of practical judgment. There 
is no doubt, in his mind, that many perceptions do have an im- 
port for action. Not merely sign-posts, and familiar symbols of 
the kind, but many perceptions lacking this obvious reference, 
have a significance for conduct. It must not, of course, be sup- 
posed that all perception, at any one time, has cognitive proper- 
ties; for some of the perceptions have esthetic, and other non- 
cognitive properties. Only certain elements of a situation have 
the function of cognition. 

Dewey goes on to say that care must be taken in the use made 
of these sign-functions in connection with inference. "There 
is a great difference between saying that the perception of a shape 
affords an indication of how to act and saying that the perception 
of shape is itself an inference." 2 No judgment, Dewey seems to 
imply, is involved in responding to the motor cue furnished by a 
familiar object. Again, the common idea that present percep- 
tion consists of sensations as immediate, plus inferred images, 
implies that every perception involves inference. But the 
merging of sensations and images in perception can be explained 
naturally, by the fusion of nervous processes, and no supple- 
mentary (transcendental) act of mind is needed to explain the 
integrity of experience. 

The tendency to take perception as the object of knowledge, 
Dewey continues, instead of as simply cognitive, a term in 
knowledge, is due to two chief causes. The first is that in prac- 
tical judgments the pointing of the thing towards action is so 
universal a trait as to be overlooked, and the second is that 
signs, because of their importance, become objects of study on 
their own account, and in this condition cease to function directly 

1 Op. cit., p. 522 f. 

2 Ibid., p. 536. 



LATER DEVELOPMENTS. 115 

as cognitive. Dewey means, apparently, that because the cog- 
nitive aspect of things is never attended to except when they are 
'known,' or treated as objects of judgment, there is a tendency 
to suppose that they always have the character that pertains to 
them as 'known' things. 

Again, Dewey says, perception may be translated as the effect 
of a cause that produced it. But the cause does not ordinarily 
appear in experience, and the perceptions, as effects, remain 
isolated from the system of things. Truth and error then be- 
come matters of the relation of the perception to its cause. The 
difficulties attendant upon this view can be avoided by taking 
sense perceptions as terms in practical judgments. Here the 
'other term' which is sought is the action proposed by the per- 
ception. "To borrow an illustration of Professor Woodbridge's: 
A certain sound indicates to the mother that her baby needs 
attention. If there is error it is not because the sound ought 
to mean so many vibrations of the air, while as matter of fact 
it doesn't even suggest air ( . vibrations, but because there is wrong 
inference as to the act to be performed." 1 The idea is tested, 
not by its correspondence with some formal reality, but by its 
ability to lead up to the experience to which it points. 

From the consideration of error as cognitive, Dewey passes on 
to consider its status as primitive sense data. He draws a dis- 
tinction between sensation as psychological and as logical. 
Ordinary sensation, just as it comes, is often too confused to 
serve as a basis for inference. "It has often been pointed out 
that sense qualities being just what they are, it is illegitimate to 
introduce such notions as obscurity or confusion into them: a 
slightly illuminated color is just as irretrievably what it is, as 
clearly itself, as an object in the broad glare of noon-day." 2 
But when a confused object is made a datum for inference, its 
confusion is just the thing to be got rid of. It is broken up by 
analysis into simple elements, and the psychologist's sensations 
are logical products, not psychological facts. "Locke writes a 
mythology of the history of knowledge, starting from clear and 

l 0p. cit., p. 538. 
2 Ibid., p. 540. 



116 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

distinct meanings, each simple, well-defined, sharply and un- 
ambiguously just what it is on its face, without concealments 
and complications, and proceeds by ' natural ' compoundings up 
to the store of complex ideas, and the perception of simple re- 
lations of agreement among ideas: a perception always certain 
if the ideas are simple, and always controllable in the case of the 
complex ideas if we consider the simple ideas and connections by 
which they are reached. Thus he established the habit of taking 
logical discriminations as historical or psychological primitives — 
as ' sources ' of beliefs and knowledge instead of as checks upon 
inference." 1 This way of treating perception found its way into 
psychology and into empirical logic. The acceptance of the 
doctrine that all sense involves knowledge, Dewey believes, 
leads to an epistemological logic ; but all perception must involve 
thought if the 'given' is the simple sensation. 

There is nothing especially new in this critique of sensational- 
ism. Historically, sensationalism had been displaced by idealism, 
and the idea that reality is a construct of ideas held together 
by logical relations was given up long before functionalism ar- 
rived on the scene. But if inference, or rationality, is not 
present in all experience as the combiner of simple into complex 
ideas, it may be present in some other form, even more vital. 
Dewey, however, does not consider such possibilities. 

Finally, in an article of slightly earlier date than the studies 
which have just been considered, Dewey returns to a considera- 
tion of metaphysics, and the possibility of a metaphysical stand- 
point in philosophy. This article, entitled "The Subject- 
Matter of Metaphysical Inquiry," 2 deserves careful notice. 

The comments of a number of mechanistic biologists on 
vitalism furnish the point of departure for Dewey's discussion. 
These scientists hold that, if the organism is considered simply 
as a part of external nature, as an existing system, it can 
be satisfactorily analyzed by the methods of physico-chemical 
science. But if the question of ultimate origins is raised, if it be 
asked why nature exhibits certain innate potentialities for pro- 

1 Op. cit., p. 541. 

2 Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. XII, 1915, pp. 
33 7-345. 



LATER DEVELOPMENTS. 117 

ducing life, science can give no answer. These questions belong 
to metaphysics, and vitalistic or biocentric conceptions may be 
valid in the metaphysical sphere. 

This raises the question of the nature of metaphysical inquiry. 
Dewey says that the ultimate traits or tendencies which give rise 
to life need not necessarily be considered ultimate in a temporal 
sense. On the contrary, they may be viewed as permanent, 
'irreducible traits,' which are ultimate in the sense of being 
always present in reality. The inquiry and search for these 
ultimate traits is what constitutes valid metaphysics. "They 
are found equally and indifferently whether a subject-matter in 
question be dated 1915 or ten million years B. C. Accordingly, 
they would seem to deserve the name of ultimate, or irreducible, 
traits. As such they may be made the object of a kind of inquiry 
differing from that which deals with the genesis of a particular 
group of existences, a kind of inquiry to which the name meta- 
physical may be given." 1 

The irreducible traits which Dewey finds are, in the physical 
sciences, plurality, interaction, and change. "These traits have 
to be begged or taken in any case," for wherever and whenever we 
take the world, we must explain it as "a plurality of diverse 
interacting and changing existences." 2 The evolutionary sciences 
add another trait; that is, evolution, or development in a direc- 
tion. "For evolution appears to be just one of the irreducible 
traits. In other words, it is a fact to be reckoned with in con- 
sidering the traits of diversity, interaction, and change which 
have been enumerated as among the traits taken for granted in 
all scientific subject-matter." 3 

The doctrine that plurality, interaction, change, and evolution 
are permanent traits of reality gains in clearness when contrasted 
with the opposed theories which involve creation, absolute 
origins, or temporal ultimates. The term 'ultimate origins' 
may be taken in a merely relative sense which is valid. The 
French language has an origin in the Latin tongues, which is an 
ultimate origin for French, but this is not an absolutely ultimate 

1 Op. cit., p. 340. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., p. 345. 



Il8 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

origin, since the Latin tongues, in their turn, have origins. It is, 
for instance, meaningless to inquire into the ultimate origin of 
the world as a whole ; and it is equally futile to trace any part of 
the world back to an absolute origin. "That scientific inquiry 
does not itself deal with any question of ultimate origins, except 
in the purely relative sense already indicated, is, of course, recog- 
nized. But it also seems to follow from what has been said that 
scientific inquiry does not generate, or leave over, such a 
question for some other discipline, such as metaphysics, to deal 
with." 1 

Theories like that of Laplace, for instance, trace the world 
back to an origin in some undifferentiated universe; or, in Spen- 
cer's terms, some state of homogeneity. From this original 
state the world is said to evolve. But the undifferentiated mass 
lacks the plurality, interaction, and change which are presup- 
posed in all scientific explanation. These traits must be present 
before development can occur. "To get change we have to 
assume other structures which interact with it, existences not 
covered by the formula." 2 In short, although Dewey only im- 
plies this, all scientific explanation presupposes a system of inter- 
acting parts ; nothing can be explained by reference to an undif- 
ferentiated world which lacks such traits. 

Dewey is particularly interested in the origin of mind or intel- 
ligence. In dealing with mind, he says, we must begin with the 
present, and in the present we find that the world has an organi- 
zation, "in spots," of the kind we call intelligence. This existing 
intelligence cannot be explained by any theory which reduces it 
to something inferior. The "attempt to give an account of any 
occurrence involves the genuine and irreducible existence of the 
thing dealt with." 3 Mind cannot be explained by being explained 
away, nor can it be explained as a development out of an original 
source in which the potentiality, or direction of change towards 
mind, was lacking. 

The evolution of things, Dewey says, is a real fact, and is to 
be reckoned with. Moreover, if everything that exists changes, 

1 Op. cit., p. 339. 

2 Ibid., p. 343. 

3 Ibid., p. 344. 



LATER DEVELOPMENTS. 119 

then the evolution of life and mind surely have a bearing on the 
nature of physico-chemical things. They must have in them the 
trait of direction of change towards life and mind. "To say, 
accordingly, that the existence of vital, intellectual, and social 
organization makes impossible a purely mechanistic metaphysics 
is to say something which the situation calls for." 1 In other 
words, the world, metaphysically considered, must have evolu- 
tion, as well as the physico-chemical traits. " Without a doctrine 
of evolution we might be able to say, not that matter caused life, 
but that matter under certain conditions of highly complicated 
and intensified interaction is living. With the doctrine of evo- 
lution, we can add to this statement that the interactions and 
changes of matter are themselves of a kind to bring about that 
complex and intensified interaction which is life." 2 Dewey 
holds that evolution rests upon the reality of time: "time itself, 
or genuine change in a specific direction, is itself one of the ulti- 
mate traits of the world irrespective of date." 3 

This article presents on the whole a distinct advance over the 
position taken in the earlier essay, "Some Implications of Anti- 
Intellectualism," which was reviewed in the last chapter. Dewey 
is not now, to be sure, instituting a wholesale inquiry into the 
nature of being, but he betrays an interest in the general, as 
opposed to the specific traits of reality. He inquires into the real 
nature of the world, and believes that he discovers its ultimate 
traits. This essay, of course, is incomplete, and consequently 
indefinite in certain important respects. It may be said, never- 
theless, to give an accurate view of the metaphysical back-ground 
against which all of Dewey's theories are projected. His meta- 
physics, as would be expected, are evolutionary throughout, and 
evolution is conceived, where he is at all definite, in biological 
terms. 

1 Op. cit., p. 345. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid. 



CHAPTER IX 

CONCLUSIONS 

Dewey's interest as a philosopher centres, from first to last, 
upon knowledge and the knowing process. All that is vital in 
his ethical, social, and educational theories depends ultimately 
upon the special interpretation of the function of knowledge which 
constitutes his chief claim to philosophical distinction. Dewey's 
logical theory, as has been seen, was the natural and inevitable 
outcome of his demand for an empirical and 'psychological' 
description of thought as a ' transformatory ' process working 
actual changes in reality. If in the beginning of his career he 
found the problem of the nature of knowledge all-important for 
his own interests, he came in the end to regard it as the problem 
of problems for all philosophers. There is no mistaking Dewey's 
conviction that the special interpretation of knowledge which he 
advocates opens the door to important advances in philosophical 
speculation, while it ends all discussion of those pseudo-problems 
which result from a false, epistemological formulation of the 
function of knowledge. 

The history of the development of Dewey's thought, set forth 
in the preceding chapters, does not pretend to furnish an adequate 
estimate of his philosophical 'system. The two questions, of 
origin and worth, are, after all, distinct. The genetic account of 
Dewey's theory of knowledge may serve to make its bearings and 
implications better understood, may reveal its deeper meaning 
and import, but the final estimate of its value as a philosophical 
hypothesis depends on other considerations. In this final chap- 
ter, it is proposed to deal with the question of the positive value 
of functionalism as a working hypothesis. This criticism may 
also serve to gather together the threads of criticism and com- 
ment which run through the previous chapters, and reveal the 
general ground upon which the writer's opposition to Dewey's 
theory is based. 

120 



CONCLUSIONS. 121 

There can be no question that Dewey's theory of knowledge 
rests, finally, upon the doctrine of 'immediate empiricism;' 
upon his belief in "the necessity of employing in philosophy the 
direct descriptive method that has now made its way in all the 
natural sciences. . . . "* This doctrine is clearly stated in the 
first essay reviewed in this study, "The Psychological Stand- 
point" (1886). To quote again from that essay: "The psycho- 
logical standpoint as it has developed itself is this: all that is, is 
for consciousness or knowledge. The business of the psychologist 
is to give a genetic account of the various elements within this 
consciousness, and thereby fix their place, determine their 
validity, and at the same time show definitely what the real and 
eternal nature of this consciousness is." 2 The descriptive method 
here advocated does not differ, as an actual mode of procedure, 
from that of Dewey's later empiricism. It lies at the basis of 
all his speculation, earlier as well as later, and is undoubtedly the 
most important single element in his philosophical system. 

In "The Psychological Standpoint" Dewey ascribes the 
failure of the earlier empiricists to their desertion of the direct 
descriptive method (a criticism repeated frequently in later 
essays). Locke, for instance, instead of describing experience 
as it actually occurs, interprets it in terms of certain assumed 
simple sensations, the products of reflection. These non-ex- 
perienced elements, Dewey believes, have no place in a purely 
empirical philosophy. 

But the empiricist must deal in some manner with the pro- 
ducts of reflection. The atoms of chemistry and the elements 
of the psychologist are not experienced facts, but still they play 
a valuable, indispensable role in the technique of the sciences. 
What is to be done with them? It must be made to appear that 
they are valid within knowledge, but invalid elsewhere. This 
leads to a separation of knowing from other modes of experienc- 
ing, and the descriptive method is depended upon to maintain 
the empirical validity of the separation. It has been seen how 
Dewey's attempt to interpret knowledge led gradually to a dis- 

1 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 240. 

2 Op. cit.. Mind, Vol. XI, p. 8 f. 



122 JOHN DEWETS LOGICAL THEORY. 

tinction between the ' cognitional ' and the ' non-cognitional' 
processes of experience. 

The completed theory of knowledge depends for its validity 
upon the distinction thus established between knowing (as 
reflective thought) and the practical attitudes of life. The 
concepts, elements, and other apparatus of reflection are em- 
ployed, it is said, only when there is thinking, — and this is only 
occasionally. Theory is an instrument to be used in connection 
with that special activity, reflective thought, the general aim of 
which is the furtherance of the practical ends of life. 

One fairly obvious difficulty with this separation of reflection 
from the other life activities is that the 'direct descriptive 
method,' as here employed, is itself reflective. How does it come, 
then, that this particular method achieves such an effective 
hegemony over the other modes of reflection? The 'descriptive 
method,' as the method of pure experience, is made to determine 
or supplant all other methods. It defines the limits and aims of 
conceptual systems; it marks out the limits, aims, and tests of 
reflective thought in general. How, it may be asked, does the 
'direct descriptive method' escape the limitations which it im- 
poses upon the other forms of reflective thought? 

It has been seen that in Dewey's view logic is subsidiary to 
psychology. But psychology (his psychology) results from the 
application of the 'descriptive method' to experience. The 
'descriptive method,' it may be inferred from this, is not subject 
to logical criticism. On the contrary, it is the basis of all logic. 
Logic, as the criticism of categories, is confined to the study of 
the instrumental concepts as functioning within the knowledge 
experience, and its limits are set by descriptive psychology. 
There is, apparently, no means by which the ' direct descriptive 
method ' can itself be brought under criticism. 

Dewey says: "By our postulate, things are what they are 
experienced to be; and, unless knowing is the sole and only 
genuine mode of experiencing, it is fallacious to say that Reality 
is just and exclusively what it is or would be to an all-competent 
all-knower; or even that it is, relatively and piece-meal, what it 
is to a finite and partial knower." 1 Reality is not simply what 

1 "The Experimental Method," Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 228. 



CONCLUSIONS. 123 

it is known as, for it is experienced in other ways than by being 
known. "But I venture to repeat that . . . the inferential 
factor must exist, or must occur, and that all existence is direct 
and vital, so that philosophy can pass upon its nature — as upon 
the nature of all of the rest of its subject-matter — only by first 
ascertaining what it exists or occurs as." 1 

Reflection, then, is not designed to furnish an insight into the 
nature of things. Acquaintance with reality must be obtained, 
not by reflecting upon it, but by describing it as it occurs. What- 
ever else this may mean, it certainly aims at demonstrating the 
superiority of description to the supposedly less effective modes 
of thought. It cannot be conceded, however, that 'description,' 
as employed by Dewey, is non-reflective, or super-reflective. 
If things are not what they are known as, then they are not what 
they are known as to a describer. The point of this objection 
will be obvious if it is remembered that it is the method of ' direct 
description' which enables Dewey to distinguish between the 
1 cognitional ' and the ' non-cognitional ' activities of life, and make 
thought the servant of action. If Dewey's descriptive method 
is not reflective, then there is no such thing as reflection. 

Passing for the moment from this criticism, which is not apt 
to be convincing in such abstract form, it may be well to consider 
for a time the psychology upon which Dewey's logical theory is 
grounded: the psychology which is established by the 'direct 
descriptive method.' 

From the standpoint of the nervous correlates of experience, 
Dewey's theory involves two postulates: first, that customary 
conduct is carried on by an habitual set of nervous adjustments, 
and, second, that reflection is a process whereby new reactions 
are established when habitual modes of response fail to meet a 
critical situation. 

It must be clearly recognized that, so far as the nervous 
system is concerned, the scheme is highly speculative. The 
advance made by physiology towards an analysis and under- 
standing of the minute and specialized parts of the nervous 
organism has necessarily been slow and uncertain. Whatever 

1 "The Experimental Method," Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 240. 



1^4 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

plausibility Dewey's theory possesses must depend, not upon 
the technical results of neurology, but upon the external evidence 
which seems to justify some such scheme of nervous organization. 

An examination of this evidence shows that it falls under two 
main heads: (i) facts drawn from the observation of the outward 
behavior of the organism, and (2) facts derived from an intros- 
pective analysis of the thought-process. 

The study of behavior shows that man thinks only now and 
then. Most of his conduct is, literally, thoughtless. It is said 
that thought is outwardly manifested by a characteristic attitude, 
marked by hesitation and an obvious effort at adjustment. The 
introspective analysis of the thought-process shows that it alone, 
among experiences, is accompanied by analysis, abstraction, 
and mediation. Again, both the internal and external evidence 
show that a puzzling situation (whose nervous correlate is a 
conflict of impulses) is the stimulus which awakens thought. 
These are important items in the list of evidence which supports 
the functional theory. 

It would be a tedious and unnecessary task to subject each 
of these bits of evidence to empirical criticism. It will be better 
to deal with them by showing that they do not necessarily imply 
functionalism, since they are compatible with a psychology 
directly opposed to the fundamental assumptions of Dewey 
theory. 

It is doubtless true that men think only occasionally and with 
some reluctance. This is a common observation. What is to 
be made of this intermittance of thought? The evidence merely 
shows that man is more wide awake, energetic, and alert at some 
times than at others. On these occasions every faculty of the 
organism is in operation, higher as well as lower centres are 
pitched to a high degree of responsiveness, not at hap-hazard, 
to be sure, but apropos — tuned to the situation. In saying that 
men think only now and then nothing more is necessarily implied 
than that men are for the most part sluggish and indifferent, and 
the periods of high intensification of the normal processes contrast 
sharply with the habitual lethargy of conduct. 

Against Dewey, it will be maintained here that thought cannot 



CONCLUSIONS. 125 

be defined as a special kind of activity considered from the side 
of the organism. The life processes are constantly welded into a 
single unified activity, which may, as a whole, be directed upon 
different objects. Thus, from the side of its objects, this life 
activity may be called eating, running, reading, and whatever 
else one chooses. Thinking, from this standpoint, may be defined 
as the direction of effort upon symbols and abstract terms. But 
thinking in this case would be identified on the basis of its con- 
tent, not in terms of special nervous activities in the organism. 
Whether, therefore, thinking signifies that intense periodical 
activity which has been noted, or preoccupation with a certain 
kind of subject-matter, it in no case implies the operation of a 
special organic faculty of the type described by Dewey. 

But, again, it is said that true reflection is marked by a certain 
characteristic bodily attitude, which bespeaks inner conflict and a 
search for adjustment. This contention seems to have little 
ground in fact. The puzzled, hesitating, undecided expression 
that is usually supposed to betray deep cogitation may in fact 
mean simply hesitation and bewilderment, — the need for thought, 
rather than its presence. The expression repeals a certain 
degree of incompetence and sluggishness in the individual con- 
cerned, and signifies a lack of wide-awakeness and responsiveness. 
A student puzzling over his algebra, a speaker extemporizing an 
argument, a ball-player using all his resources to defeat the 
enemy, have attitudes so unlike that no analysis could discover 
in them a common form of expression. And yet it would be 
madness to deny that thinking attends their various performances. 
There is, in short, no evidence from the side of bodily expression 
to indicate the presence in man of a special nervous faculty called 
reflection. 

Consider next the contention that the cue to thought is a 
puzzling situation, involving a problem. No problem, no 
thought; no thought, no problem. This may mean either that a 
man finding himself in a difficult situation uses all his energy 
and resource to escape from it, or, that he never concerns himself 
with abstract symbols except under the spur of necessity. The 
former meaning contains some truth, but the latter is what 



126 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

Dewey would call a 'dark saying.' If by 'thought' be meant 
that period of high activity of all the faculties which is only 
occasional, it is doubtless true enough that a problem is fre- 
quently needed to awaken it. Man is content to let life glide 
along with a minimum of effort; he cannot, if he would, long 
maintain the state of high activity here called 'thinking.' As a 
consequence of not thinking when he should, man frequently 
finds himself involved in situations requiring the exercise of all 
the energy and resource he possesses. But the really efficient 
'thinker' is the man who keeps his eyes open, who sees ahead. 
He is not efficient merely because of the excellence of his estab- 
lished modes of response, but, more particularly, because he is 
alive and alert. His thinking is effective in preventing difficult 
situations, as well as in getting out of them. 

Defining 'thought,' however, as the direction of activity upon 
symbols and conceptions, there seems to be little warrant for 
asserting that it functions only on the occasion of a concrete, 
specific problem. One would say, on the contrary, that this 
would be an unfavorable occasion for the study of fundamental 
principles, whether scientific or practical. Summing up the 
external evidence, then, one would say that it accords as well 
with the hypothesis that the life processes constitute a single 
activity directed upon various objects, as with the hypothesis 
that thought is a very special organic activity, having a special 
biological function. At least, the evidence for the existence of 
such a special faculty is dubious and uncertain. 

What does the internal evidence prove? The analysis of 
thought contained in James's chapter on "Reasoning" in the 
Principles of Psychology has been the guide for Dewey and other 
pragmatists in this connection. 1 James undertakes to show that 
reasoning is marked off from other processes by the employ- 
ment of analysis, abstraction, and the use of mediating terms. 
It must be urged here, not only against James, but against a 
considerable modern tradition, that this account of thinking is 
misleading and inaccurate. The question to be faced, of course, 
is whether the processes of thought differ radically from the non- 

1 See the review of Dewey's essay, "The Experimental Method," in Chapter 
VII of this study, p. 91 ff. 



CONCLUSIONS. 127 

reflective processes in kind, or whether they are simply the inten- 
sification of processes which attend all conscious life. It should 
be noted that no concession is made to the notion that thinking 
is a special kind of process; only its subject-matter is special, or 
else thought is simply a period of wide-awakeness and alertness. 
In the latter sense, thought involves an intensification of the 
powers of observation, an awakening of memory, a general 
stimulation of all the faculties. It calls for the fullest possible 
apprehension, demands the most complete insight into the nature 
of the situation that the capacities can provide. The contrast 
between the adequate view of reality achieved in this manner 
and the common and inadequate apprehension of ordinary life 
is very great, and might easily lead to the supposition that think- 
ing (so understood) contains elements which are added through 
the activities of a special nerve process. 

But is it only in such moments that we deliberately resolve a 
situation into its elements, and abstract an ' essence ' to serve as a 
middle term in inference? It is certain that at such moments 
these processes are more distinct than at other times; but the 
whole situation, for that matter, stands out more clearly and 
distinctly. Perception is keener, memory more definite, feeling 
more intense. In less degree, however, all attention involves 
analysis and abstraction. Experience has always a focus and a 
margin; there is a constant selecting and analyzing out of im- 
portant elements, which in turn lead to further conclusions and 
acts, through associations by contiguity and similarity. This 
process appears in an intensified form in the high moments of 
life. In short, thought and passive perception are differentiated, 
not by the elements which compose them, but by the degree of 
energy that goes into perception, memory, feeling, and discrimi- 
nation. There is nothing in the evidence to show that thinking 
is a special kind of activity, which operates now and then. On 
the contrary, there is every reason to hold to the position that 
the life processes are one and inseparable, operating continually 
in conjunction. 

What shall be said, then, with reference to the assertion that 
thought operates in the interests of the non-cognitive life pro- 



128 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

cesses? That it comes 'after something and for the sake of 
something,' namely, 'direct' experience? Since the separation 
of the activities into various 'functions' cannot be allowed, by- 
occasional thought must then be meant those moments of ener- 
getic aliveness described above. Translating, Dewey's theory 
would read something like this: Man employs his faculties to 
the fullest extent only when he is compelled to do so. He gets 
along habitually, that is, with a minimum of effort, as long as he 
can, but rouses himself and makes an earnest effort to com- 
prehend the world only when his environment presents him 
with difficulties which demand solution. The test of man's 
thinking consists in its efficiency in getting him out of trouble, 
and enabling him to return to his habitual modes of sub-conscious 
conduct with a minimum of annoyance. In short, thinking is an 
instrument which subserves man's natural laziness, and its test 
is the efficiency with which it promotes an easy, or, at any rate, a 
satisfactory mode of existence. 

No doubt some men, perhaps many men, do follow such a 
programme ; but it would not be kind to Nature to assert that she 
planned it so. 

This separation of the activities of life into several distinct 
processes having each a special function looks like a survival of the 
old faculty psychology, against which modern thought has pro- 
tested as much as against anything whatever. The conception 
of the organic processes as separate in action has all the faults of a 
merely mechanical representation of consciousness. Doubtless 
some advantage is to be obtained, for purposes of investigation, 
by treating thought, appreciation, and affection separately; 
but it is a serious error to take this provisional distinction as real. 
It is a curious fact that Dewey, with all his opposition to such 
modes of procedure, himself falls into this abstract way of treat- 
ing the 'functions' of experience, seeing not the beam that is in 
his own eye. 

It is this very form of treatment, strangely enough, which 
enables Dewey to call biology to the support of his interpretation 
of the function of knowledge. According to the Darwinian 
theory, survival of the species is dependent upon the development 



CONCLUSIONS. 129 

of special structures and capacities which enable the organism to 
adjust itself to its environment. Dewey finds, following a 
familiar argument, that the lower animals are adapted to their 
environment by special habits of reaction which are relatively 
fixed and inelastic. Man, on the contrary, has an exceedingly 
plastic nervous system, which enables him to meet changing 
conditions. Man is not only highly adapted, but highly adapt- 
able. This trait of plasticity, or adaptability, Dewey believes, 
is a product of natural selection, and, of course, in the final 
analysis, this high degree of plasticity is the thought function. 

It is scarcely necessary to say that this treatment of thought 
is highly speculative. Dewey offers little concrete evidence to 
support his position; indeed, it would require the labor of a 
Darwin to supply the needed evidence. Instead of grounding 
his theories upon the results of science, Dewey adapts the ever 
elastic 'evolutionary method' (not really that of biological evolu- 
tion, however indeterminate) to his own scheme of things. It 
would be hard to discover in philosophical literature a method 
more purely theoretical and even dialectical than that whereby 
Dewey gives his logical theory the support of evolutionary theory. 

The ultimately mechanical tendencies of his argument are 
conspicuous, in spite of all disclaimers. The effect of his analysis 
is to set plasticity or adaptability off by itself, as a special trait 
or feature of the nervous system. The lower forms of life 
are governed, we are told, by fixed reflexes, and the trait of 
adaptability appears at some higher stage in the process as a 
superadded capacity of the nervous system, correlated, no doubt, 
with special nervous structures. Evolutionism would not serve 
Dewey so well, had he not previously made this separation 
between the organic functions and their correlated structures; 
but, given this abstract treatment of the life processes, he is able 
to make the doctrine of selection contribute to its support. In 
opposition to Dewey's argument, it would be reasonable to con- 
tend that plasticity is inherent in all nervous substance. The 
higher organisms are more adaptable, because there is more to be 
modified in them, — more nerves and synapses, more pliability. 
There is no sound empirical reason for accepting Dewey's bio- 
logical conclusions. 



130 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

Taking Dewey's theory at its face value, — and it would be 
presumptuous to search for hidden meanings, — its net result 
is to place the function of knowing in an embarrassing situation 
with respect to its capacity for giving a correct report of reality. 
Dewey expressly denies, indeed, that the purpose of knowing is 
to give an account of the nature of things. Reality, he asserts, 
is whatever it is 'experienced as being,' and it is normally ex- 
perienced in other ways than by being known. The nature of 
reality is not hidden behind a veil, to be searched out; but is 
here and now, as it comes and goes in the form of passing expe- 
rience. Knowing is designed to transform experience, not to 
bring it within the survey of consciousness. 

How does it stand, then, with Dewey's own account of the 
knowledge process? He has reflected upon experience, and 
claims to have given a correct account of its nature. Dewey's 
conception of the processes of experience is genuinely conceptual, 
a thought product, designed to furnish a solid basis for belief 
and calculation. But reflection, by his own account, is shut in 
to its own moment, cannot apprehend the true nature of 'non- 
cognitional' experiences, and cannot, therefore, deal adequately 
with any problems except such as are furnished it by other 
'functions.' No wonder that ' anti-intellectualism ' should result 
from such a conception of knowledge. 

Philosophers have always held that the purpose of reflection 
(whatever reflection may be, psychologically) is the attainment 
of a reliable insight into the nature of the world. Practical 
considerations compel this view. Ordinary, casual observation 
is superficial and unsystematic; it never penetrates beneath the 
surface. Doubtless reality is, in some degree, what it is in unre- 
flective moments; but it is frequently something more, as man 
learns to his sorrow. Reflection displaces the casual, haphazard 
attitude, in the attempt to get at the real nature of the world. 

The results of reflection, moreover, are cumulative. It tends to 
build up, by gradual accretions, a conceptual view of reality 
which may serve as a relatively stable basis for conduct and cal- 
culation. Thought does, indeed, possess a transforming function. 
The reasoned knowledge of things is gradually extended beyond 



CONCLUSIONS. 131 

the occasional moments of inquiring thought, supplanting the 
casual view with a more penetrating insight ; reality becomes more 
and better known, and less merely experienced. 

Dewey reverses this view in a curious manner. It is 'experi- 
ence' that is built up by the action of thought, not knowledge 
itself. This play on terms might be innocuous, if it were not 
accompanied by his separation of the knowing function from 
others. Dewey makes 'knowing' the servant of 'direct expe- 
rience' by giving it the function of reconstructing the habits of 
the organism, in order that unreflective experience may be 
maintained with a minimum of effort. The non-reflective expe- 
rience becomes the valuable experience, and knowledge is made 
to minister unto it. This is truly a ' transvaluation of values.' 

Dewey asks: "What is it that makes us live alternately in a 
concrete world of experience in which thought as such finds not 
satisfaction, and in a world of ordered thought which is yet only 
abstract and ideal?" 1 This sharp separation of thought from 
action is vigorously maintained. Following are some of the 
terms by means of which the difference between direct and 
reflective experience is expressed: 'direct practice,' 'derived 
theory;' 'primary construction,' 'secondary criticism;' 'living 
appreciation,' 'abstract description;' 'active endeavor,' 'pale 
reflection.' 2 This casual, easy distinction escapes criticism be- 
cause it seems harmless and unimportant. The distinction, 
however, is not real. It does not correspond to the simple facts 
of life. Thinking, far from being 'pale reflection,' is often a 
strenuous and energetic 'activity.' Reflection, not 'direct expe- 
rience,' is often, at least, at the high moment of life. Experience 
becomes unmeaning on any other basis. 'Living appreciation' 
and 'primary construction' involve thought in a high degree; 
'pale reflection' is lazy contemplation, lacking the spark of life 
that characterizes true thought. 

There is no escape from Dewey's needlessly alarming conclu- 
sions, except by maintaining that thought accompanies all 
conscious life, in greater or less degree, and that the moment of 
real, earnest thinking is at the high tide of life, when all the 

1 Studies in Logical Theory, p. 4. 

2 Ibid., p. 2. 



I3 2 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

powers are awake and operating. Thought must be made 
integral with all other activities, a feature of the total life or- 
ganization, rather than an isolated phenomenon. Man is a 
thinking organism, not an organism with a thinker. 

It is not to be supposed for a moment that by 'thought' is 
here meant the activity of a merely subjective knower. Dewey 
does, indeed, deal effectively with the subjective ego, and with 
representative perceptionism. But by 'thought' is here meant 
reflection, judgment, inference; and in this sense thought is said 
to be present in all experience. There can be no question of the 
relation of thought, so understood, to reality; for the reason 
that it has been so integrated with experience as to be inseparable 
from it. Setting aside knowing as the awareness of a conscious 
subject, there remains an issue with Dewey concerning the actual 
place of thought, as an empirical process, in experience, and the 
issue must be settled on definite and really empirical grounds. 
So much, then, for ' f unctionalism ' and its psychology. 

Something should be said, before closing this discussion, 
concerning philosophical methods in general, since Dewey's 
psychological approach to the problems of philosophy must be 
held responsible for his anti-intellectualistic results, with their 
sceptical implications. In the beginning of his career, as has 
been seen, Dewey adopted the 'psychological method,' and he 
has adhered to it consistently ever since. This initial attitude, 
although he was not aware of it for many years, cut him off from 
the community of understanding that exists among modern 
idealists concerning the proper aims and purposes of philosophical 
inquiry. Although at first a professed follower of Green and 
Caird, Dewey's method was not reconcilable with idealistic 
procedure, and in a very real sense he never was an idealist. 
The virulence of his later attacks on ' intellectualism ' may be 
explained in terms of his reaction against a philosophical method 
which interfered with the development of his own 'naturalistic' 
tendencies. 

The method of idealism, or speculative philosophy, is logical; 
but it may perfectly well be empirical at the same time. To the 



CONCLUSIONS. 133 

anti-intellectualist empirical logic is an anomaly, a red blue-bird, 
so to speak. The philosophical logician is represented as one 
who evolves reality out of his own consciousness; who labors 
with the concepts which have their abode in the mental sphere, 
and, by means of the principle of contradiction, forces them 
into harmony until they provide a perfectly consistent represen- 
tation of the external world which, because of its perfect ration- 
ality, must somehow correspond with the cosmic reality. In 
spite of the fact that no man possesses, at least in a sane condi- 
tion, the mental equipment requisite for such a performance, 
certain critics have not hesitated to impute this kind of logical 
procedure to the idealists. To quote from Dewey himself: 
"For modern philosophy is, as every college senior recites, 
epistemology ; and epistemology, as perhaps our books and lec- 
tures sometimes forget to tell the senior, has absorbed Stoic 
dogma. Passionless imperturbability, absolute detachment, 
complete subjection to a ready-made and finished reality ... is 
its professed ideal. . . . Philosophy has dreamed the dream of a 
knowledge which is other than the propitious outgrowth of 
beliefs that shall develop aforetime their ulterior implications 
in order to recast them . . . , the dream of a knowledge that 
has to do with objects having no nature save to be known." 1 
This charge against modern idealism has little foundation. 
/^Speculative philosophy repudiated, long ago, the ' epistemological 
\ standpoint* as defined by Dewey. Idealists have not fostered 
the conception of a knowing subject shut in to its own states, 
seeking information about an impersonal reality over against 
itself. Note, for example, this comment of Pringle-Pattison on 
Kant, made over thirty- five years ago: "The distinction between 
mind and the world, which is valid only from a certain point of 
view, he took as an absolute separation. He took it, to use a 
current phrase, abstractly — that is to say, as a mere fact, a fact 
standing by itself and true in any reference. And of course 
when two things are completely separate, they can only be 
brought together by a bond which is mechanical, external, and 

1 "Beliefs and Existences," The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, p. 172 f. 



134 JOHN DEWEY'S LOGICAL THEORY. 

accidental to the real nature of both." 1 Dewey himself never 
condemned ' epistemology ' more effectively. But it is useless 
to cite instances, for any serious student familiar with the litera- 
ture of modern philosophy ought to know that 'idealism* has 
never really been ' epistemological ' in the sense meant by Dewey 
and his disciples. Subjectivism is not idealism, — the stolid 
dogmatism of neo-realism to the contrary notwithstanding. 

Idealism holds, speaking more positively, that philosophers 
must submit the conceptions and methods which they employ 
to a preliminary immanent criticism, in order to determine the 
limits within which they may be validly applied. Every genuine 
category or method is valid within a certain sphere of relevance, 
and the business of criticism is to determine by empirical in- 
vestigation or by 'ideal experiment' (which means much the 
same thing) what concrete significance the conception is capable 
of bearing. Dewey, from the standpoint of idealism, is guilty of 
a somewhat uncritical use of the categories of ' description ' and 
'evolution.' Are the categories of biology fitted to explain mind 
and spirit? Instead of instituting an inquiry designed to answer 
that question, Dewey accepts 'evolutionism' as final, and at- 
tempts to force all phenomena into conformity with his resulting 
logical scheme. He misses the valuable checks upon thought 
which are furnished by the 'critical method,' and is none too 
sensitive to the technical results of the special sciences. 

The logical approach to philosophy strictly involves certain 
implications which have been overlooked by many of its critics. 
It may well be admitted that our real categories are not fixed and 
final, but are perpetually in process of reconstruction. The 
process of criticism inevitably makes manifest the human and 
empirical character of the particular forms of reflective thought. 
It recognizes the fact of development, both in knowledge and in 
reality, and by this very recognition the value of knowledge is en- 
hanced. It is forced, by the very nature of its method, to recog- 
nize the concrete and practical bearings of thought. Indeed, 
there is a sense in which idealism would declare that there is no 

1 The Philosophical Radicals, p. 297. The essay in which it occurs, "Philosophy t 
as a Criticism of Categories," was first published in 1883, in the volume Essays on 
Philosophical Criticism. 



CONCLUSIONS. 135 

thought — when thought, that is, is taken to mean an isolated 
fact out of relation to the world. It is not possible to make this 
retort upon the critics of idealism without recognizing that there 
has been a vast misjudgment, amounting almost to misrepresen- 
tation, of the intellectual ideals of modern speculative philosophy. 

To conclude, it is neither by abstract logical processes, nor 
yet by the dogmatic employment of scientific categories, that 
philosophy makes progress, but by an empirical process which 
unites criticism and experiment. In speaking of the develop- 
ment of modern idealism, Bosanquet says: " All difficulties about 
the general possibility — the possibility in principle — of appre- 
hending reality in knowledge and preception were flung aside as 
antiquated lumber. What was undertaken was the direct 
adventure of knowing; of shaping a view of the universe which 
should include and express reality in its completeness. The test 
and criterion were not any speculative assumption of any kind 
whatever. They were the direct work of the function of know- 
ledge in exhibiting what could and what could not maintain 
itself when all the facts were confronted and set in the order they 
themselves demanded. The method of inquiry was ideal experi- 
ment." 1 

When all has been said, this method remains the natural and ^>"? 
normal one. Dewey's 'psychological method,' by contrast, 
seems strained and far-fetched, an artificial and externally 
motived attempt to guide the intellect, which only by depending 
upon its own resources and its own increasing insight can hope 
to attain the distant and difficult, but never really foreign goal. 

1 "Realism and Metaphysics," Philosophical Review, Vol. XXVI, 1917, p. 8. 



